The Torah at The End of The Train-Poems

by Mark Taksa

The Torah at the End of the Train, Taksa’s latest chapbook, won the 2009 Poetica Magazine Annual Chapbook Award and was subsequently published. The poems reflect an imagination that was stimulated by a recent trip to Israel and by his deepening connection to Judaism. "I can’t say I had a large theme like ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ in mind," Taksa says, "but I wanted to explore my feelings about practicing Judaism and what Judaism means in a world that is mostly not Jewish," he says. "I wanted also to analyze the feelings of someone living within a particular zone." Taksa’s poems are exemplary in the “show-don’t-tell” school. He cites the Imagists, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, and Modernist poets like T.S. Eliot as key influences, along with Wallace Stephens, Russel Edson, Elizabeth Bishop, and George Oppen. "I try to develop a story that carries meaning," Taksa says, “while using my imagination to create something new with language.” Although the poems take seed with a personal experience, a brush with another person, something overheard or witnessed, the poetic imagination soon takes over. "I don’t feel I must directly state what started the poem. I learn something about my own feelings and my understanding of the world," Taksa says, as the poem progresses, with imagery being the dynamic force. Taksa says he is not trying to be obscure in the poems he writes. In fact, he works to make the poems as understandable, yet as imaginative as possible. But, he also does not expect that everyone will understand his poems. "Poetry is difficult; if it is too easy, it’s not poetry." Paperback

31 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009