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New Messiahs

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Henry Israeli's debut collection, New Messiahs, moves with strength and bitter tenderness to collect what might otherwise be lost: a dying father, "the machinations of a spring unsprung," the dismantling of a carnival that must move on to another town. The beauty of Israeli's poetry--which has appeared in some of the finest literary reviews--is two-fold: first, with stark and vital images, he weaves narratives that envelop the reader in a world that seems half-dream and half-hard stone: to get lost in this world is both pleasure and pain. Second, Israeli's play with language, in such poems as "Graffiti" makes one not care if the words have any meaning tied to the world where our feet touch solid earth. "I live in the jungle at the edge of civilization," he writes. "Well, not quite. . . . I live at the jungle- / gym near the hedgerow of realization; / that is, I have a goat that shakes my martinis, or, conversely, I goad / my shook-up friend, Martin, with phrases / like, "I love the hubbub of a summer day, / the elixir of a widow in white stockings." To watch Israeli take us near the edge of despair only to yank us back with language that makes us laugh is not only a pleasure; it is a trip we should all take. Buy this book. You will not be disappointed by a new voice who will say much to us in the years to come.

Israeli's vision in New Messiahs arises out of a history both collective and personal. His speaker grasps--urgently, blindly, lovingly--at fragmented images handed down to him as the child of Holocaust survivors. But not only is the past brought into brutal relief in these pages. The present, entrenched in memory and imagination, and laden with snapshots of a father gone mad, figures as the book's overriding and inescapable subject. Raw and surprising, the rhythms of Israeli's lines feel wrenched from our daily struggles to live with and (paradoxically?) honor the things that break us.