The Knives We Need

by Nava EtShalom

Overview

The Knives We Need is a settler-colonial coming-of-age tale, set in landscapes in Palestine and the United States. In short, iterative lyric poems, Nava Etshalom combs through disastrous settler genealogies. Wittily, meticulously, the collection unpicks the stitches of nationalism, sees its costs sidelong, and goes looking for another kind of home.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887486678
Publisher:	Carnegie-Mellon University Press
Publication date:	02/27/2021
Series:	Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Nava EtShalom’s poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Believer, Boston Review, and elsewhere. Her work has won 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and awards from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Philadelphia and moves through crip time. This is her first book.
 

Table of Contents

Charisma 9

I

God of Suicides 13

Proposal 14

Landing 15

Conduct 18

Materials 21

Anathalamion 22

Unfortunately 23

Injury 24

Eclipse 25

II

Certainly 29

Philtrum 30

Repair 31

Iteration 32

Yartzeit 33

Composition 35

Departure 36

At the Jerusalem Hotel 37

Succession 39

Inheritance 40

After the Fire 42

The Binding of Isaac 43

Recognition 44

III

Holy Committee 47

Delivery 48

Rendition 49

The Body Count 52

Bronze 55

Archive 56

Patronym 57

Fortunately 58

Arrival 59

Of Ceos 60

Before the Birds 61

Editorial Reviews

Hauntingly original, this spare but rich collection weaves an emotionally complex tapestry that includes bits of history and Biblical tradition as well as fragments of our calamitous present. Moving by suggestion and association rather than linear narrative or argument, Nava EtShalom crafts subtle coherence from beautifully singing lines and constantly surprising language.

Martha Collins

"I never made anything / but a concession to thunder,” writes Nava EtShalom. Her poem-making in The Knives We Need is urgent, spare, passionate, mysterious. Hers is a voice of prophecy reverberating with the thunder of old patriarchal sins, the Binding of Isaac, stolen land, suicide, mourning, a saving disobedience. These wise, beautiful poems count gaps and gashes, and from the fracture, draw new wholeness, a healing art.

 

Rosanna Warren

Nava EtShalom’s Fortunately registers the note of regret its title bears by ingenious means. You can take time thinking about it, but EtShalom, a witty, meticulous and astute poet, has delivered her verdict on our times and their horrors of displacement, devastation and guiltless equanimity in the face of violence. EtShalom’s evidence goes back to her begats and ours, her yearnings and ours. She almost redeems us by noting an unstoppable capacity for love within us and by registering that innocence does exist. Otherwise, the countless unforgivables that we lay at the feet of misfortune are luminously, even beautifully rendered. Fortunately is a powerful collection by a gifted and deeply engaging poet.

Khaled Mattawa