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Eve Grubin InteReview
by Andrea Baker

Andrea: Has your writing always been so intricately bound to your practice
of Judaism? Do you see Judaism remaining in the foreground of future work?

Eve: When I began writing poetry I was not an observant Jew. While I always
practiced certain rituals and celebrated a few holidays and had spent some time in Israel, I knew very little about Judaism and my connection was relatively minimal.
I developed as a poet independent of Judaism. At the same time, I have always been interested in spiritual questions, and I began to notice that many of my favorite poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickinson, and mentors, such as Marie Howe, Jean Valentine, and Fanny Howe were also spiritual questers and delved into sacred themes in their work although none are Jewish.
As I became committed to Judaism, Jewish themes streamed into my work organically. I do think that Judaism will probably be a part of much of my future writing because I am swimming in its language and concepts every day. At the same time, I have to admit, I have written some recent poems where Judaism plays no apparent role.

Andrea: I find the multi-layered ways in which religion and femininity collide to be one of the most compelling themes of Morning Prayer. There's one particularly charged moment for me. It's early in the book and you write: "In the dream the rabbi's modesty made him turn away/ when he saw me standing alone by the water/ in my bathing suit./ He simply went, walked home through the wet reeds." I know you've written quite a bit on modesty and it's clear that you consider modesty virtuous. Here, though, the rabbi's turning away feels like abandonment. Can you comment on this?

Eve: You really picked up on a subtlety in that poem, a nuance that I was not fully conscious of, but I think it's there none-the-less. That moment you quote in the poem explores, on a conscious level, a revelation. I was newly exposed to Judaism at the time I began writing that poem and became interested in the Jewish way of relating where the potential for erotic energy is acknowledged and avoided in inappropriate contexts.
Through Judaism I became interested in ways of conducting relationships with others that preserve the vitality of erotic life. Modesty is a way of doing this, and in the poem, the speaker is learning from the rabbi, whose modesty is so intact that he instinctively left, "went," upon seeing her undressed.
Regarding your sense of abandonment in the same line. The whole poem involves an experience of becoming religious, which simultaneously liberates, grieves, scares, heals, renews, calms, and opens up the speaker. When the rabbi walks away, perhaps a remnant of loss remains; she is leaving the familiar assumptions behind, and there she is, about to enter a new world. She is absorbing new values and concepts, which may mean letting go of some old ones. Perhaps she is projecting these losses onto the rabbi. And perhaps she feels, strangely, on some level, abandoned or rejected by his dignity.

Andrea: I just turned on my computer to ask you to forgive me. I really didn't word my last question very well. "Collide" was too strong and I knew it at the time but couldn't find a better word and was impulsive. I am a secular reader- a non-observant half Jew- but my husband is deeply religious and I couldn't have more respect for religion- I feel like I have a crush on a number of them- and have had a life long crush on Judaism. I really hope I didn't offend you. That said, there are hard questions and I do think that last one was a little hard. I have no idea how you feel about entering that difficulty- I hope you don't feel like I'm trying to trap you or throwing contradictions in your face. For me, the contradictions are the marrow of the beauty and I'm really curious to hear your thoughts.
That said, "Intersect" is the word I want instead of "collide." - "I find the multi-layered ways in which religion and femininity intersect to be one of the most compelling themes of Morning Prayer."

Eve: It's funny that you were worried about "collide" because I didn't even notice it. It's sweet of you to be concerned. If something bothers me in the future I'll discuss or address it in my response so you won't have to worry that I am ever harboring some repressed resentment.

I am curious about your crushes on religions. What an original way of feelings religious. I am glad to hear that you feel a connection. It makes me feel less like a freak. ( :

I find this "underdialogue" to be as interesting as the interview itself! This is the real interview beneath the interview.

And I agree: the contradictions ARE the marrow of the beauty in poetry. So bring them on and let's talk about them!

Andrea: I'll have to find a way to make this conversation part of the interview.

I was actually meaning that the contradictions of religion are the marrow of their beauty (though I would say the same of poetry...). Would you agree with that too? The difference between a crush and a commitment must be tangled up with reactions to the contradictions and acceptance of absolutes. A crush is also something with its own beauty but not something that's going to go anywhere.

Have you read Kathleen Jesme's Motherhouse? I don't know why it hasn't gotten more attention and I think it will in the future. She was going to be a nun and entered the convent. It's not clear to me exactly what happened but she left or was asked to leave. One way or the other it is clear that that part of religion you say, "simultaneously liberates, grieves, scares," became for her a seriously troubling violence. Still, she never says a single thing against the church- she only shows us through subtle and gorgeous quotes from various texts.

But, back to our interview: Parts of Morning Prayer are written in a rather straight-forward manner, while others utilize a good deal of fragmentation. Do you find yourself using different techniques to get at the poem when you write with different strategies? For instance, do you write from a notebook or take notes while reading spiritual material? Or do you do a lot of the 'writing' in your head? What is the actual process like for you?

Eve: Yes, the contradictions of religion are the marrow of its beauty, I do agree with that, at least as far as Judaism goes as it’s the only religion I know well. I think some of my poems, such as “How the Rain” and “Morning Prayer” explore the contradictions within religious experience. At the same time, there are moments of clarity and simplicity.

The more I learn about prayer, Torah, biblical commentaries, and Talmud, the more I notice the paradoxes, which are one of the things which make Judaism so rich. Paradox is the one thing you can depend on in Judaism. In many ways it’s the tension between the contradictions and the absolutes which generates a profound Jewish religious experience. I think this may be why my book may contain both narrative and fragmentary poems. The fact that these two types of poems exist in the same book represents a struggle with approaching inconsistencies in experience, religion, and thought.

Most of the narrative poems were written earlier and the fragmentary poems came later. I must have unconsciously realized that particularly difficult topics could be accessed through splintered music and language. The direct narrative strategy couldn’t handle topics such as religion and trauma. I turned to the sentence fragment, trusting in the unpredictable, jolting rhythms, and layers of images and sound to carry a complex thought process.

Andrea: I was just looking back on your book and I think one aspect of what makes your use of varied poetic modes so interesting is that, at least in the way the book is structured, the switch from a more direct style to a fragmented style almost seems to be caused by seeking a wide sanity, as laid out in the poem, “Wild.” I don’t know if I’m reading that into the book, but I suspect not. Can you comment more on this?

Eve: Did you mean to write “wide” sanity or was that a typo and did you mean “wild”? I like the idea of wide sanity. Do you know Emily Dickinson’s poem that begins “The brain is wider than the sky”?

Now that I have the chance to think about it, you are right that there is a connection between a move towards a wild sanity in the book and the use of a more fragmented style. The whole book is interested in sanity, a sanity of intelligence, spontaneity, physical joy, erotic energy, modest vigor, and wild humanity. The narrative poem embraces sanity, but the fragmentary poem revels in the wildness of sanity.

The divine mind holds endless possibilities and contradictions, and the sane wild mind—wider than the sky—can record snippets of these possibilities. When numerous viewpoints exist at once in the same fragmented lyric poem, opposites tug at each other. A wild grace emanates from this tugging as the contradictions attempt to move towards a paradoxical peace.

Eve Grubin's book of poems, Morning Prayer, was published by The Sheep Meadow Press in December of 2005. She teaches poetry at The New School and City College, where she is also the Marvin and Edward Kaplan Lecturer in Jewish Studies. Her essay, "After Eden: The Veil as a Conduit to the Internal," will appear in The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Folklore, and Politics (U. of CA Press, 2007). Her poems have been published in the American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a fellow at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education.

Andrea Baker was the recipient of the 2004 Slope Editions Book Prize for her first book, like wind loves a window. She is also the author of the chapbooks gilda (Poetry Society of America, 2004) and gather (moneyshoteditions, 2006). She maintains a blog at andreabaker.blogspot.com.