Dybbuk Americana

Inventive poetry explores Jewish identity in America/>/>"How can I teach a prayer / I only know how to recite?" "America, whose death / didn't you come from?" These are some of the questions that poet Joshua Gottlieb-Miller wrestles with in his beautiful, gripping new collection. By turns experimental and documentary, Dybbuk Americana draws out the questions around Jewish identity in the United States, and what it means to pass on Jewish identity to one's child. This hybrid text draws on art, mysticism, and history, taking the dybbuk, a figure from Jewish folklore, as its central metaphor. A dybbuk is a restless spirit who inhabits another's body, and as a possessing spirit the dybbuk is often treated as a demonic force, but it can be read as merely trying to climb the ladder of the afterlife. In other words, a kind of striver. Enacting the idea of competing selves in one body, Dybbuk Americana plays with form via a series of text boxes that create a multi-channel effect on the page. The body of the poem can be read with surrounding and intercutting text boxes to generate multiple interpretations. This innovative poetic technique maintains a dialogue with Jewish literary lineages: Talmudic commentary and interpretation of the oral law, as well as the fragmented nature of geniza, a place where Jews store sacred documents when they fall out of use. Dybbuk Americana weaves together the father-son arc within a larger socio-political commentary and historical narrative. Poems move deftly between the ironic and the mystic, from aphoristic questioning and inventive narratives, to interview, oral history, and archival materials. In these lines, "the angels./ They get as close as they can." Witty, curious, warm, and searching, Dybbuk Americana signals a fresh voice in Jewish-American poetry./>/>[sample text]/>/>CHAIN MIGRATION/>/>It took ten men/>to make a minyan,/>/>but only one name/>of G-d for us to share,/>/>so we settled on/>America, one by one,/>/>we settled on America,/>man and woman./>/>My grandfather/>earned his way over/>/>shoveling coal/>in the hold of a boat./>/>Grandmother sewed/>gold into her coat. In secret/>/>they sewed, they sold,/>they glowed. I dream of/>/>gold. G-d's name in gold/>milked and honeyed/>/>in the dust/>beneath our boots—/>/>our dust. And when they made/>a minyan and didn't/>/>realize it? And when/>they married in/>/>and didn't realize it?/>No matter: they sewed,/>/>they sold, they glowed./>Yes, they sold/>/>their solid gold, sold gold/>into gold, sewed gold/>/>together into dust./>When I was born/>/>they gave me/>a dead man's name./>/>But that's true/>for everyone.