Song in Tammuz is Reviewed by the Jewish Book Council

Song in Tammuz Book Review

By Brian Hillman, assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy and Reli­gious Stud­ies at Tow­son University.

“Avia Tadmor’s daz­zling debut col­lec­tion, Song in Tam­muz,engages with promi­nent themes in con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish poet­ry and push­es them to new heights.

Tad­mor bat­tles with the bur­den and joys of famil­ial inher­i­tance, includ­ing the inde­scrib­able lega­cy of the Holo­caust, as well as the restric­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties afford­ed by both the tex­tu­al mate­ri­als and the nor­ma­tive prac­tices of the Jew­ish tra­di­tion. Sev­er­al poems adopt the per­spec­tive of the bib­li­cal fig­ure Ruth. Begin­ning with ​’Ruth Before Leav­ing Moab,’ the poems attend to the emo­tion­al aspects of the bib­li­cal heroine’s sto­ry of exile in a man­ner akin to clas­si­cal midrash. In ​’Ruth from a Sud­den Clear­ing in the For­eign Field,’ the speak­er cat­a­logs what she has for­got­ten from her life in Moab: both her father and her Phoeni­cian moth­er tongue.

Like Ruth, Tad­mor is a trav­el­er from her home­land. The open­ing poem, ​’Exo­dus Song,’ grounds the col­lec­tion in the feel­ing of dis­place­ment. Yet even in exile, one can make mean­ing.”