Tablet Fragments

by Tamar Rubin

Overview

Tamar Rubin grew up immersed in Hebrew, Jewish traditions and texts, in a secular household, the daughter of an immigrant mother. In becoming a physician, she learned yet another language: medicine.

The poetry in Tablet Fragments, Rubin's first published collection, weaves between the texts of all her learning, deploying evocative biblical mythopoetics and the precision of medical science.

Writing as a diagnostic eyewitness to the complexities of her life, Rubin explores the natural history of familial and romantic relationships, the impacting of migration and displacement, and her composite identities as outsider and insider; as doctor and her own body; as daughter, lover, mother and poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773240657
Publisher:	Signature Editions
Publication date:	04/01/2020
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	15 - 17 Years

About the Author

Tamar Rubin is a Winnipeg physician, writer and mother. She has published her work in both literary and medical journals, including Vallum, Prairie Fire, CV2, The New Quarterly, Journal of the American Medical Association, The Hippocrates Medical Poetry Anthology, and others. Her unpublished chapbook, Tablet Fragments, was shortlisted in Vallum's 2017 chapbook contest, and her poems were long listed in Room magazine's 2017 Poetry Contest and CV2's 2018 Young Buck Contest.

Table of Contents

Prologue 9

Domestic Disharmony

Home archeology 12

Renovation poem 570 A-3 13

Grey 14

Stitches 15

Culture and sensitivities 16

Salad experiment 17

Argument, biblical proportions 18

Middle pain 19

Cold start 20

Motherhood/Daughterhood/Genesis

Perennial 22

Sabra, exploding 23

Plague of the first born 24

Tamar 25

I 26

Fontanelle 27

Attachment theory 28

Not in January 29

Post-partum to-do list 30

Exodus

Tablet fragments 32

When the moving truck pulled up 37

Ex vivo 1 38

Ex vivo 2 39

Mea culpa ex parte 40

Geographia 41

Eulogy for a graveyard and converted church along Grey County Road #1 42

Two eagles 43

Cusp 44

Road to Whiteshell 45

Trembling aspens 46

Promise to Algonquin Park 47

Reclaiming myself from old photographs 48

What I lost in becoming a doctor 49

An airport 50

Body of Neuroses

Those thirty minutes I stood outside 52

Operating table 53

Knee 54

Bitter berry 55

Auntie Elinore's missing eye 56

Meditation nervosa 57

If 58

Between the temples, Agra 60

Body cento 61

Body building 62

Inside and outside 63

Immigrant 65

Zaydie's feathers 66

Rainforest (in real life) 67

Machzor (High Holiday Prayer Book) 68

Death Obsession

Confession 70

Toothless 71

The day after your death 72

Autopsy 73

Foreshortening 74

Late summer 75

Bone china 76

Stem cell transplant: day zero 77

Parallel progress notes 78

Medical decision-making when there is no basis for medical decision-making 79

Playing Boggle in the hospice 80

Re:Genesis

Burning bush, Ghana 82

Eschar 83

Mist at Banff 84

1.19,62 (Cancer Libra conjunction) 85

Why we kissed 86

Speaking crow 87

Aegean blue, Santorini 88

Calling Winnipeg home 89

Kiddush margin notes 90

Wedding ceremony for body parts 91