Glance - by Chanda Feldman (Paperback)

About the Book

"Glance, the second collection of poetry by Chanda Feldman, explores the experiences of an American (Black and white and Jewish) family that moves abroad to find a safer haven from contemporary racial violence. Spanning diverse landscapes in Israel and the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, the poems grapple with the inability to escape brutalities and prejudices, asking where and if it is possible to find a sense of home and community. Feelings of belonging and estrangement, safety and threat, as well as questions of identity, both of the self and the family, drive the speaker to look inward and outward in order to navigate the world. While never breaking free from attendant anxieties, the poems also revel in the beauty of environment and place as they traverse global spaces, from the sea to the city, from the playground to the museum, from orchards to the synagogue. Feldman utilizes prose poems to enact shifting perspectives on the page about racial, religious, and national identity, in which formal elements of fragmentation, repetition, multiclause sentences, and imposed margins become instrumental to cadence, dramatic tension, and narrative development. Additionally, the use of the second person pronoun "you" invites any reader to inhabit the speaker's position and embark on their journey. Elsewhere, ekphrastic poems reflect on artworks by Black American artists, as well as contemporary women artists and old masters. The speaker also returns to her own adolescence and family history to reflect on how she developed a way to articulate what she wants and sees for herself as a writer and citizen in the world. With diverse perspectives and poetic forms, Glance confronts permutations of brutality and prejudice against the backdrop of the beauty found in place, community, and culture, prompting profound reflections on home and belonging"--

Book Synopsis

Glance, the second collection of poetry by Chanda Feldman, explores the experiences of a Black and white and Jewish American family that moves abroad to find respite from contemporary racial violence. Spanning diverse landscapes in Israel and the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, the poems grapple with the inability to escape brutalities and prejudices, asking where--and if--it is possible to find a sense of home and community. Feelings of belonging and estrangement, safety and threat, as well as questions of identity, both of the self and the family, drive the speaker to look inward and outward in order to navigate the world.

Though never breaking free from their attendant anxieties, Feldman's poems revel in the beauty of environment and place as they traverse global spaces, from the sea to the city, from the playground to the museum, from orchards to the synagogue, seeking a home in the world.

Review Quotes

"Feldman's quiet, powerful verse unfolds bloom after bloom with a slow seethe. . . . A stumble-proof voice that never leaves a passenger behind."--Tyehimba Jess

About the Author

Chanda Feldman is the author of Approaching the Fields. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, AGNI, Poetry magazine, and the Southern Review, among other publications. She is the recipient of a fellowship in literature from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University. Feldman is associate professor of creative writing at Oberlin Colleg