Laurel Benjamin
Written into the Curve of the Sea's Open Throat - Available soon!
Advanced Praise—
Laurel Benjamin’s second poetry collection, Written into the Curve of the Sea’s Open Throat, offers up abundance in its search for a tikkun olam, a healing of the world. With Benjamin as medium, translator of ghosts and languages, storyteller, historian, singer, and illuminator, the poems transmute experiences of pain and loss into a richness of detail and passion. Benjamin’s great-grandfather gives us the title of the collection, the necessary compromise involved in immigrating from Poland, but Benjamin adds to this a fullness in traveling from one thing to another, as we also travel into the making of art in so many forms—photography, painting, crocheting, felting, cooking. Each time, the vividness of Benjamin’s observation enables us to inhabit, to feel, to make sense of complexity. And on top of everything else, there are the goats. This book is a wonderful read. ​
—Janet Bowdan, editor of Common Ground Review, author of Making Progress
Laurel Benjamin hasn’t stopped inventing language since childhood, when she and her brother communicated with each other in a language of their own devising. Written into the Curve of the Sea’s Open Throat finds creative ways to talk about family history and Jewish identity as Benjamin experiments with punctuation and form. Deliberate, and often as delicate as the crochet to which she compares them, these poems convey both meaning and deep feeling. Yet they leave space for readers to bring their own associations and resonances, like the pieces of visual art that inspired many of them. Smart, beautiful work. ​
—Susan Cohen, author of Democracy of Fire
Oh, with that starling, the subtle weight of hineni (×”× × ×™), we begin these poems, invited to walk side by side, observe every detail, because we “could all use some advice on enlightenment." Laurel Benjamin’s evocatively titled, Written into the Curve of the Sea’s Open Throat, carries us on the tides to investigate, and feel present with the echo of the imperative, “you will be mortal.” Read slowly, selectively, and stay in the poems for a while, feel the textures and music of constant seeking, where we also find enlightenment, "rash with coercive thoughts," a tingle all the time, around the edges of haphazard life, a heart-breaking round up of life’s celebrations, losses, but most of the time, witness to the constant motion, constant awareness, fully present and attentive, “tucked behind our ears.”​
—Michelle Holland, author of Circe at the Laundromat
Written into the Curve of the Sea's Open Throat shows the power of the ekphrastic process, in a deeply personal story of a woman coming to terms with the body, a long-term marriage, family, and personal loss, as well as the intersections of family with her Jewish heritage, and the loses inherent in that diasporic experience. In “The Sacrificial Goat,” the narrator says, “I’ve come to ask the goats about impermanence,” an approach that is simultaneously direct and metaphorical, which captures the subtle power of this lovely book.​
—Carol Dorf, author of The Theory Headed Dragon
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Image: Perle Fine The Sea's Throat
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In this rich poetry collection, Laurel Benjamin weaves deft ekphrastic and figurative narratives with lyrics and gorgeously wrought verse memoir. This is a complex meditation on parents, illness, siblings and of moving through young adulthood and femininity. The book is full of lyric narrative connections, of desire to be free and of a deep conversation with art and allusion. Complex and deeply moving, these poems “cannot follow / where the blue moss / sings a song of its own loss.” Instead, they allow us to imagine the writer ever evolving, walking “through/the cypress garden with its airy pockets, opened.”​
—Eileen Cleary, founding editor of Lily Poetry Review, author of Wild Pack of the Living
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Unforgettable. What a dazzling collection. Laurel Benjamin has an uncanny way of getting inside you even though her words are about someone else. Her exquisite poetry stirs up memories and impressions as if you shared them. These are poems about difficult conversations and loneliness, of beauty and regret. The bridge between reader and writer is made of art and jazz and faded photographs, of beloved poets whose words inspire hers and ours. And of the tiny wildflowers everywhere that keep growing just like hope.​
—Lorette C. Luzajic, founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review
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The poems in this standout collection read like "islands joined by an isthmus" where slivers of Americana appear in conversation with jazz, fine art, the fragility of the body’s failings, and a deep engagement with the natural world, all the while transporting the reader "to the vanishing point where silk weaves together." As Benjamin confesses, "I’ve got nothing to lose," and in doing so, she offers the reader both reflections and revelations that sing so profoundly they "restructure our bones."​
—Megan Merchant, author of Hortensia, in winter (New American Press)
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Artwork: Megan Merchant