SHIRIM: A JEWISH POETRY JOURNAL

Essay: "Reflections" by Myra Sklarew

Perhaps we are like Agnon's Torah scribe. When the scribe prepares for his work, copying the Torah letter by letter, space by space, first he must rise at midnight, with ashes on his head, weep for the destruction of Jerusalem, for the death of the righteous, for the exile of the Divine Presence. In the morning he must immerse himself in the ritual bath and than turn his heart away from worldly matters.

When we shake our head from side to side, all the years fly around inside, five thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven years at least. Perhaps more. Enough for all our tribulations and for our joy. Pogroms and false messiahs and holy days and massacres, rabbis and miracles, prophets and shtreimel hats, exile and returns.

When they compare our work to John Donne — if we are lucky! — or to H.D. or to Mina Loy or Gertrude Stein, what they do not know is that these folks are too young, they have only been on the earth for a moment. And we have been living with all those years inside us. When they say, forget the past, it is as if they have asked us to forget our arms and legs. That long history is what holds us up. Exile and Exodus, Assyrian, Babylonian, Isaiah or King David or Herod or Sabbatai Zvi —they all belong to us.

Even when Isaac Singer is chasing away pigeons in the park with the noise of the clap board — Take One! Take Two! — when they are filming him in a typical day and have to keep starting over to be sure the pigeons are in the picture, Singer calls on the past. "Do you think," complains Singer, "when God was creating the world He had to repeat three times, 'Let there be light, let there be light, let there be light'?" The creation of the world is always in our heads even when we are buying a loaf of bread. It's what gives everything we do a kind of irony, a comparison. It's what gives us metaphor.

So when Agnon was asked what he most dreamed of for his work, how he would like to be remembered a hundred years from now, he answered: "To have a page of my work mistaken for a page of Midrash."

I come from the Mitnagdim and have a strange built- in strictness to my character. I believe that the original religious service should not be changed in any way, that the ritual must be repeated as it was in the past (even though I know the service is an accretion built through contributions from many centuries and many hands). I say this not out of religious orthodoxy but rather that I might be able to glimpse the outlines of the ancient Jewish world if the ritual comes to us here without alteration. That said, if a page of my work or even a few lines were to become part of the religious service, if those lines might become detached from me, without my name, and just find themselves in the liturgy, that would be something, wouldn't it.

"An Appreciation of the Poetry of Myra Sklarew" by Carol V. Davis

Myra Sklarew and I bonded over our interest in, or one might say, obsession with Eastern Europe. Mine was as a result of living on and off in Russia for many years and hers was with her quest to trace what happened to her family and other Jews in Lithuania during the Holocaust. We only met once in person; I think it was when I was in Washington, D.C. in 2008. I had gone to give a reading at the Library of Congress, with the theme “Inside and Out,” having returned from a second Fulbright in Russia and after my first full- length poetry book was published in the U.S.

One of the interesting differences in our experiences in Eastern Europe was what our purposes were. On my first Fulbright in 1996-97, I was teaching at the Jewish University in St. Petersburg, Russia. One of the main goals of the university was to help with the reestablishment of Jewish life in the former Soviet Union. To that end, I was teaching courses on modern Jewish literature and later on Holocaust literature. Myra Sklarew’s quest in Lithuania was primarily in finding out what happened to Jews, documenting this and exploring personal and historic themes through her poetry. Myra Sklarew (1934-2024), was a Renaissance woman.

Author of numerous collections of poetry, three chapbooks, and books of nonfiction and science, her poems are in the Contemporary Poets Archive at the Library of Congress and her papers are in the University of Maryland Archives. She won the 1977 National Jewish Book Award in English Poetry for from the backyard of the diaspora (Dryad Press, 1976). She earned her BS in biology at Tufts, worked at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory studying bacterial genetics and viruses and then at Yale in the department of Neurophysiology. After, she received her MA in Creative Writing and American literature at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. A former president of the Yaddo artist community, she was a professor in the Department of Literature at American University. Her lifelong interest in science and the natural world informed her poetry, as did her engagement with the history of the Jews in Lithuania.

In a powerful poem, “Grandfather, Lost and Found,” she traces her own name back to her grandfather. Later, an old woman in Lithuania told her the name Myra means “shining light.” Through her research on her family, Myra discovered that her ancestors had been in the area of Lithuania for generations. Although Jews were generally forbidden to own land during czarist periods, her grandfather’s parents had owned their own land.

The themes she explored in her work varied. Her work moved seamlessly from science and the natural world, to the historical and personal, which her language and poetic structure reflected. In the poem, “A Worthy Cause,” there is a poignancy as well as slight humor in the repetition of the phrase “I lift.” In the first instance, she writes “I lift your sweater from Jerusalem,” in the second, “I lift your sock from Tel Aviv.” She finishes the poem with self-deprecating humor:

A little stitching
on behalf of Israel
a little mending
and folding
for our brethren in Israel

As you can see
I make my contribution

In the collection, Lithuania: New and Selected Poems, (Azul Editions, 1997), Sklarew acknowledges the beauty of the landscape she is observing in Lithuania, despite being keenly aware of the echoes of what happened to the Jews there in the long history of Jewish settlements and pointedly during and after the Holocaust. The title poem of this collection is 30 pages long. In the poem’s first section, time is fluid. It moves location from America to Lithuania where Sklarew recounts her first visit, imagining her family in a town, but not knowing if this were accurate:

I walked until I remembered.

But how could I? I had not been here
     before. Who could show me
          the way?

She is struck by the bounty of nature, as in “apples and plums in this season. They pick/ cherries.” In the next stanza, she contrasts this abundance with:

If you put
your foot down on the earth in Keidan or Datnuva or
     Ponar, if you stop walking and read the shape
of the earth under your foot, you can feel the skull
     or a bone of someone you knew, someone

you almost remembered.

The variation of placement on the page of these poems also mirrors the disorientation, as the speaker in the poems does not always know what she is looking for or whether or not the quest will be successful. And if “successful,” what does that mean, if it confirms tragedy and loss.

The sections in the collection, Harmless, (Mayapple Press, 2017), further explore Sklarew’s mission to find out as much as she can. In the first section, “What I Could Not Tell You,” poems move from the U.S. to Lithuania and back. Some of the poems address a “you” who survived, perhaps the cousin, Leiser Wolpe, one of the people to whom the book is dedicated. In the second section, “Harmless the World,” the poem “Forest” is written as a skinny column, of mostly four- word lines, in the center of the page, like a tree trunk. With only an initial cap to begin the poem and no punctuation, Sklarew addresses someone:

     It is here you hide
          and construct
a world birch sacred oak
     pine here you dig
     a tunnel secretly
to escape here a child
     is broken
     against a tree

The poem continues with different figures appearing: “a man ordered to climb,” and further on: “a woman scratches/ the earth for food here” and towards the poem’s end:

here a partisan sealed
     in his trench a bullet
          reaches his head
          or misses

In not naming where this forest was, nor specifically who the people are in the poem, the poem becomes a larger dialog than between the poet and the subjects. It evokes the Holocaust as a historical whole and perhaps even larger, the experience of war and its victims. This speaks to much of Sklarew’s poetry. It is both specific to her experience and her research on her family, but also universal to what often sadly can never be known in war and its aftermath.

Sklarew’s career lasted decades, her poetry exploring themes of relationships, history, nature and science. In the books, Harmless and Lithuania, family, history, and the history of Jews in Lithuania take center stage. However, the work is larger than these particulars, as it asks fundamental questions of who we are. How do people live in particular societies and groups and in greater society? What is the responsibility of the individual and a society? What is the role of history and memory in the aftermath of war and destruction? What is a society’s role in the aftermath? Can there be repair? How do family histories get passed down, manipulated or reported accurately? Myra Sklarew’s work asks these questions and more, challenging the reader to respond. We are moved by her poetry. As she wrote in the poem “beginning,” ostensibly about fishing and throwing out the line to catch fish:

when it comes back to you
it will be changed
dampened by rivers
frayed by the fields
it has passed through

Poems

Moses
by Myra Sklarew

Do you dream of Egypt? Or seek traces
of your journey before God lays you down like Isaac
at Moriah and takes away your breathing?
Do you remember Sinai where you were sorely tried?
Or seek evidence that the lengthy sojourn
In Pharaoh’s court was not of your imagining?
Do you feel the sea tearing in half? Or remember
those who dared to flee into its breach?
Perhaps your feet still move in a desert rhythm
and will not stop even here on Mount Nebo
though you watch the others cross a river beyond you.
Haven’t you pleaded for your life? What have
you to say, Bush of Burning who is not consumed?
Mountain of the Stone Tablets? And you, Moses,
do you lie back upon your rocky bed, close
your eyes and feel the cool kiss of God upon your lips,
your soul drawn out of your body like a hair drawn
out of milk, sons dispersed like seeds, no burial place?

Sacrifice
by Myra Sklarew

It is said
that for a man the earth
is his mother.

But in Jerusalem
they say
that a man
takes the earth
as his wife.

That the fruits
of that earth — grape,
spikenard, cluster
of henna and green fig
these are his offspring.

Remnants
brought to the table
innocent of the meal
as Isaac on his mountain,
as the ram of Abraham
at Moriah.

Crossing Over
by Myra Sklarew

When my first child tore
loose from me
the old woman cautioned: Bite off
her nails with your teeth
and bury them in the earth.

In the fall of that year
the feet of Abraham
went overhead — Isaac his son
at his side, the wood
for the burnt offering sprouting
leaves at one end, root hairs
at the other. And the fire
in the father’s hands
sent up its bright alphabet,
a signal to Sarah.
In the narrow passage between intent
and act, the angel’s call,
the confusion of the ram.

Here, on our side
in the Feast of Booths, the trees
have put out too much fruit
as though after the long drought
they might not survive: black walnuts,
acorns not yet ripe, tough capsules
propelled through the air
without letup; the knobs
leave their imprint
on the soles of our feet

In the firmament
between worlds the guardian
of invalid prayers—those uttered
with the lips, the heart

Decision
by Myra Sklarew

I have decided to continue with my life
at least for today.

After all, someone is needed to put on the coffee,
to unpack a box or trim a rug, to say a prayer

for the dead, someone to prepare the evening meal
or tie the child's shoelaces.

Someone is needed with a foothold in this year
to stand at the door of the year just gone.

I have decided to cross the threshold of my house,
to step into the new air, erasing the careful room

Which I fold around myself like a shawl, erasing
the black cat who has come to fill the empty space

in order to complete the composition,
erasing the plants which bend on the mantel

like land mine detectors
in their continual search for water.

Horseradish
by Myra Sklarew
For Janice

It is ecumenical
to invite three Baptists
to the reform synagogue
for a Friday night service,
the pulpit stuffed
with clergy
like unleavened bread
beneath the ceremonial cloth,

but when you lift the cruciferous
horseradish from its bin —
hoary tuber with its ancient hairs
like a giant pubis
in your hand —
the greengrocer stares.

Safe, behind his white
enameled scale
he struggles to fix
the 20-cent sticker
to the dusty misshapen root.
The others in line
look at you
as though you have just unveiled
Pithecan thropus erectus
in their supermarket.

Nothing
compared to the bloody
shankbone of the lamb
you ask for next
of the nervous
well-instructed butcher
who accidentally hands you two,
his Paschal offering.

Our Angels Don't Have Wings
by Myra Sklarew

For the most part, our angels live in this world.
They take the form of old men. Of columns of fire.

Sometimes, pillars of smoke. Though our angels speak,
they do not always say what we like. When they come

with their pronouncements to old shriveled women,
how the women laugh to think of giving birth so late!

Our angels don’t have wings, though some are very tall.
Their heads reach all the way to heaven.

We give our angels names. We call them Malakh
or messenger, sometimes Malakh Adonai,

messenger of God. Uri’el with eyes like burning coals.
Cherubim with hands like humans and cloven feet.

Ofanim for wheel-angels who carry
God’s throne. Gabri’el for the power of God.

Sama’el who tempted Eve. They are not like us.
We do not invite the home for supper. But if one

happens to be at the entryway to your house
at suppertime, it would be impolite not to ask

the angel to share your bread, not to go to the well
and draw clear water for the angel.

December
by Myra Sklarew

I did not have the luxury to be afraid,
I did not have the time.

Just as you there in war
or there in your life did not have the time.

The canal is frozen;
snow covers the tow path.
I see the forbidding white line
from the chain bridge and cross anyway.

And I see how the sky opens this morning
to take you in,
a kind of miracle

Like the burning of oil for those daysi
in the darkened temple.

I took the curve which threatened me.
I took the road in front of me.
I did not have the time to be afraid.

Biographies

Myra Sklarew (1934-2024), was a Renaissance woman. Author of numerous collections of poetry, three chapbooks, and books of nonfiction and science, her poems are in the Contemporary Poets Archive at the Library of Congress and her papers are in the University of Maryland Archives. She won the 1977 National Jewish Book Award in English Poetry for from the backyard of the diaspora (Dryad Press, 1976). She earned her BS in biology at Tufts, worked at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory studying bacterial genetics and viruses and then at Yale in the department of Neurophysiology. After, she received her MA in Creative Writing and American literature at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. A former president of the Yaddo artist community, she was a professor in the Department of Literature at American University. Her lifelong interest in science and the natural world informed her poetry, as did her engagement with the history of the Jews in Lithuania.

Carol V. Davis was guest editor of two double-issues of SHIRIM; A Selection of Contemporary Jewish American Poets (2017-18) and Four Contemporary Jewish Women Poets (2022-23). She is the author most recently of Below Zero and Because I Cannot Leave This Body and two other collections. An English/Russian collection was also published. Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, the Library of Congress and Radio Russia. Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, she also taught in Siberia and teaches at Santa Monica College, California and Antioch Univ., Los Angeles. She was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant for Siberia in 2020, postponed because of COVID and now cancelled. Donna Sternberg and Dancers is using Davis’ poetry in the recent dance piece “Ancestors’ Voices.”