Reviews of
Night Of The Broken Glass and Transformations
by Emily Borenstein:
"A moving and darkly beautiful book helping us to remember."
--- William Heyen, poet
"Emily Borenstein's Night of the Broken Glass, originally published in 1981, can now be recognized as a masterpiece, and Borenstein must be counted along with Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs, as one of the great poets of the Holocaust. This new edition now includes a second book, Transformations, in which the echoes of the Holocaust are transformed into a rich reaffirmation of life, where 'the flowers come alive at night.'
In Kabbala there are two manifestations of the Shekinah, God's bride-- as an old woman in mourning and as the Sabbath Queen, a beautiful bride. In these two masterworks, we find both of those faces portrayed with a great depth and clarity. Borenstein not only speaks for herself, but for several generations of Jews, in pristine poems that restore meaning to a nightmare that had seemed devoid of hope."
--- Howard Schwartz,
editor of Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets
"Borenstein's poetry of witness, unyielding in its ability to arouse and astonish, offers us an accounting of the evil and heroism that were the Holocaust, and also addresses profound questions: the nature of time, mortality, God and the cosmos. She leaves us with a sharp intake of breath in her stirring pleas for human sanctity. In language rich in metaphor and narrative, her vision has brought us an incandescent collection of poems that merits our praise."
--- Colette Inez, poet
"Emily Borenstein is a poet who offers readers streams of consciousness directly from her soul, bearing witness to the light and darkness of many years filled with wisdom and compassion. One cannot read her work without being deeply touched."
--- Rabbi David A. Cooper
author of
God is a Verb - Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism
"Here is a poet who writes with extraordinary intensity and unsparing honesty. She tells us in one poignant poem after another of the enormous tragedy of a terrible period in Jewish history. She reflects on the passage of time and the universality of cruelty. The poems are philosophical and marked by compassion."
--- Shulamith Chernoff, poet |
