Night Spark: The Zoe Poems, 2013, Finishing Line Press
B.E. Kahn has written from inside the labyrinth of trauma in poems that are puzzles, turns, patterns and paths that lead out and into the open air. The collection is a testament to the endurance of children and the hard work of recovering a self that has been silenced. These poems blaze with light.
~Marie Howe, New York State Poet Laureate 2012, author of The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
Kahn presents her material with a sure-handedness, restraint, and a lack of sentimentality that propels us through. And Zoe proves herself to become gradually indomitable. What a privilege for the reader to witness Zoe's slow, sure climb to redemption. This is a chapbook to read and share.
~Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, author of Slamming Open the Door
Speaking through several voices, sometimes in fragments, in images both slant and direct, these brave, powerful, elegant poems bear witness, and at the end of the book they speak of peace.
~Lynn Levin, author of Miss Plastique, 2013
B.E. Kahn involves us viscerally... shows us Zoe, a survivor who's ready to sing: to accuse, yes, and to mourn her lost childhood, but also--most compellingly--to exult.
~Nathalie F. Anderson, Author of Quiver, 2010
Praise for Spring Apples Silver Birch, 2008, Greenleaf Press, and
Landscapes of Light, 2010, Poets Wear Prada Press
L’ chayim! That’s To Life! in the Yiddish, which is said as a toast. And B.E. Kahn’s hymn
chapbook in memory of her mother Chana, Spring Apples Silver Birch, is a book that
fulfills its task. In Betti’s words: my task—remembering—your precious flame of life.
Her new chapbook Landscapes of Light carries that task onward in fresh poems
about Greece and Israel. To Life! To Light!
~Henry Braun
Author of Loyalty: New and Selected Poems and founder of Off The Grid Press
In this, her latest collection of poems based on trips to Greece and Israel, B.E. Kahn
has carefully honed her craft. The poems draw the reader into the text for she is always
alive to the moment. Yet, in a voice that is consistently lyric and nuanced, she also looks
to the future. In “Serafos” she wonders:
Could I live here? Would my
laughter sing in white houses,
through painted blue doors,
seep into pots of geranium?
And she continues her quest in “Photo Taken on the Isle of Sifnos” in which she asks
“What next? What next?”
We hope that B.E. Kahn will provide answers to these questions with forthcoming
poems and we look forward to seeing more of her work.
~Shulamith Wechter Caine
Author of Love Fugue
Landscapes of Light is a voyage of discovery. Citing song and dance, with wit and
imagination, B.E. Kahn relives for us a spiritual journey through the ancient world,
following the light, in this case, eastward, from Greece to Jerusalem. In perceptive, life-
affirming poems, she links Greek, Jew, Arab, glad for all of us that “the folk keep
dancing.” She watches the sea as the breeze “stirs/ the great soup until it is flavored
with life.” And at the wailing wall brings her own faith to bear, “those prayers I sent into
the cracks/of light-soaked stone/ are sailing somewhere in a sea of wished-for things.”
Little gems like “The Cypress Trees,” “At the Kotel, Second Day,” and “Until the Photo
Was Developed” encompass in a breath her striking insights into our own nature,
snapshots of the imagination.
~Elaine Terranova
Author of Not To |
