Collected Poems (Collected Works of Esther Cameron)

These Collected Poems are a record of introspection, observation and, occasionally, expostulation, covering nearly seven decades, beginning with a few childhood poems which represent the beginnings of orientation in the world. There is a free verse apprenticeship, the encounter with the massive influence of Paul Celan, and and then, increasingly, a return to traditional forms and often traditional diction, in the belief that the ceremonial speech of poetry can still be understood and gives the poet a better vantage point for commenting on the passing scene than the obligatory colloquialism imposed by the canons of postmodernism. This poetry is capable of satire but not of automatic irony; it gladly acknowledges influences but does not follow fashion. Mirrored on its stream are the cultural and political changes of these decades, which inflect the personal trajectory. Finally, the poems reflect an approach to and involvement with Judaism, the attempt to find a bridge between the Western culture of origin and a tradition that reveals itself like an unknown continent, giving rise, among other things, to cycles of poems on the weekly Torah portion and the counting of the omer. The poet's dearest hope, qua poet, is that on reaching the Great Coffeehouse in the Sky she will be allowed to sit down at Mandelstam's table.