We, The Women

By Merle Nudelman

Merle Nudelman plumbs the nuances and vagaries which define our relationships and the shifting moments of lover, abuser, victim, and healer. The imagery in We, the Women is at once startling and evocative. Poems of layered scenes of domesticity and of the natural world border on the elegiac. In this richly textured collection, Nudelman celebrates the transformative power of love and spiritual awakening. "In her second book, Merle Nudelman writes with the accomplishment and confidence of an established poet. Her poems possess that rare combination of emotional astuteness and a penetrating depth of vision. In this volume, We, the Women, Nudelman establishes herself as a voice who speaks from the courage of an astute, caring and defiantly humane heart" - Bruce Meyer. {Guernica Editions}

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781550714647

Merle Nudelman

Merle Nudelman is an award-winning poet, educator, and lawyer. She has published four books of poetry: Borrowed Light (2003), We, the Women (2006), The He We Knew (2010), and True as Moonlight (2014). Her first collection, Borrowed Light, won the 2004 Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Her poetry has been published in literary journals, anthologies, and zines. Her essays appear in Poetic Inquiries of Reflection and Renewal (2017) and in Poetic Inquiry: Enchantment of Place (forthcoming). She teaches memoir and poetry writing and gives workshops on healing through writing. She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

MERLE NUDELMAN

WE, THE WOMEN

 ESSENTIAL POETS SERIES 152

GUERNICA

Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.)

2006  

Contents

We, the Women

The Gift of Shannon

The Weight of Loss

Imperatives - A Ghazal

The Good Mother

Dandelion Bouquets

Variations on the Last Time

Mama-Loshen

The Kayak

Immersion

The Weekend

The Hours

Salami on Rye

Soft

First Dinner

Melon

Caesar’s Wife

The Peacemaker

Circle of Eyes

Ode to Barbed Wire

Summer Night

The Chamber of Memories

Flying

Boudoir Dining

The Emperor of China

The Practice of Law

Texture of Orange

Cousin Thomas

The Darkness of Light

The Belly Dancer

Homage

The National Museum, Nice

Shadow Music

bear’s under the cottage

Clowns and Bears

Halloween

Perception

Questioning

The Hairdo

Spirit Fragments

Red Lines

Meditation in the Wood

the morning

The Bloom of Waters

Acknowledgements

for harold

Let your suffering eyes

and your anonymous deaths

be the bridle that keeps us from straying from each other

be the cinch that fastens us to the belly of each day

as it gallops away, hooves sparking into the night.

Billy Collins

We, the Women

tender repository of people-eggs

tucked within like so many snug peas.

Calm spheres, each waiting her turn

to burst from the pod,

squirm in fertile heat,

open to him, that thrashing.

Moon-women, we twirl with earth’s music,

feet grazing the ground until our bones

lie heavy in our hips,

gourds grown hollow.