The Hoopoe's Crown - by Jacqueline Osherow (Paperback)

About the Book

Poems dealing with the land of Israel, and inconsistencies and mysteries in Biblical texts.

Book Synopsis

Poems dealing with the land of Israel, and inconsistencies and mysteries in Biblical texts.

Review Quotes

From Publishers WeeklyOsherow (Looking for Angels in New York) spans Jewish history from Abraham's times to modern Orthodoxy, then wonders what makes her so interested in the "perfect and elusive reverence" shown by the most observant Jews: "I have no right to this ridiculous/ nostalgia for a thing I never had." By contrast to her own uncertainties, Osherow calls on biblical prophets and poets from several traditions: the stringent Hosea and Jeremiah lead her into gloom, while more hopeful stanzas imagine a dialogue between the Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein and the Chinese classical poet Wang Wei. Other locale-based poems admire the prairie flowers of Saskatchewan and mock (gently) Salt Lake City, where Osherow lives. Her often deft handling of difficult forms (including a double sestina, a villanelle, several sonnets and page after page of terza rima) balances out her informal, even chatty, tone: the result (as in the work of Marilyn Hacker) is a poet who offers opinions and reactions to the weightiest questions of history and religion, while sounding less like an authority than like a particularly well-traveled friend.

About the Author

JACQUELINE OSHEROW is the author of four previous books of poems. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Jewish-American Poetry, Best American Poetry, Best Contemporary Jewish Writing, and The Extraordinary Tide: New Poems by American Women. She is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah.