Excerpts from poetry by Rodger Kamenetz
Rodger Kamenetz is the author of three books of poetry. He’s been called "one of the most formidable of Jewish voices of American poetry." He’s best known for The Missing Jew: New and Selected Poems, now in its second printing of its second edition. He’s also the author of Stuck: Poems Midlife and Nympholepsy. Kamenetz received the Prairie Schooner Reader’s Choice Award for poetry in 1997. His poems are widely anthologized, including all the major anthologies of Jewish and Jewish-American poetry, among them Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry (Beacon Press), Voices Within the Ark (Avon Books) and The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Writing.
His poems have appeared in Grand Street, New Republic, Shenandoah. Kamenetz is a Professor of English and teaches poetry writing and poetics at Louisiana State University, in the graduate Master of Fine Arts program.
From THE MISSING JEW: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS
Pilpul
Rabbi, if a child is born with two heads
which head should wear the yarmulke
on which head the teffilin?
Some say the right head and some
say the left. All quote Torah.
Some say both heads, just in case.
But if a man is born with two heads
he is always confused. He never knows
on which head to wear the yarmulke.
Two heads and only two eyes.
He walks towards himself
in the old cemetery, where the rabbis
are buried. There seems to be some
disagreement: some are saying
we are dead; others, we are alive.
Some say both, all quote Torah.
From STUCK: Poems Mid Life
Stuck
The bolt was rusted tight.
Tried banging, banging didn't help.
Tried shaking, flecks of rust fell
like fossil sparks. Tried cursing.
A thick stream of curse
spattered the stubborn metal.
Gave it the wrench,
the wrench flew off the handle.
Tried silent meditation good
for a lifetime of peace.
The bolt disappeared, the day
disappeared, ghosts walked through
the negative of night, high wires
hummed, my hair grayed, thinned
whitened, swirled like wispy snow
driven off an adamant mountain.
I opened my eyes: the bolt head
fell off, but the bolt stuck.
I rose from that place hating
the ruined machine at my feet
and called for cold beer, for-
giveness: nothing rusts like tears.
Recently Anthologized Poems
Rye
Inside a caraway seed, half forgotten
a hint of pepper and pepper mint
locked in a small black boat.
In the framework of pores, the breaths
of yeast, the boats slip in
to their holes: The slightly sour
flavor of good Jewish rye--I’m
talking about the white stuff not the black--
also promises sweetness. This contradiction
is how flavor defies logic, how
in the end logic is a silly thing
even though it builds bridges and murders
millions, logic forgets the taste of rye
and wouldn’t consider the crust of rye
in all its attributes: firmness, brownness,
circumference and wisdom
for there is wisdom in a crust that holds
the whole within its ellipse,
that restrains the moister whiteness
like the mud shore of a lake in the sun.
Again the seeds are boats. Some genius
thought of them. Probably they have
healing powers, even lodged for days
between the teeth, hitchhikers from an old
sandwich, remembrance of things pastrami.
The Broken Tablets
The broken tablets were also carried in an ark.
In so far as they represented everything shattered
everything lost, they were the law of broken things,
the leaf torn from the stem in a storm, a cheek touched
in fondness once but now the name forgotten.
How they must have rumbled, clattered on the way
even carried so carefully through the waste land,
how they must have rattled around until the pieces
broke into pieces, the edges softened
crumbling, dust collected at the bottom of the ark
ghosts of old letters, old laws. In so far
as a law broken is still remembered
these laws were obeyed. And in so far as memory
preserves the pattern of broken things
these bits of stone were preserved
through many journeys and ruined days
even, they say, into the promised land.
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