Antiquity

June 20, 2016
Homolka’s alluring debut seamlessly tiles scenes of past and present to create a mosaic that is constantly conscious of the inescapability of time. The book opens with seven poems named for Goshen, the biblical land of the exodus, but these poems are about the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust. Homolka mixes sorrow and hope across time and place, with his speaker musing, “I would have to have known history/ not been so close to it/ I couldn’t make sense of it.” Thus, the fleeting nature of the present can only be captured in swaths of the past. When “people begin to think/ about where they might be buried,” they look back as the “Poisonous stars wander the sky/ till historians fall off as rags and the dead/ are no longer counted.” Homolka works his own personal experience and perspective into a collective family history, as well as broader Jewish history. “Everyone here/ is dying to/ arrive at some/ gravely original/ take on things,” Homolka writes, “while along/ the edge of the/ lake for decades/ those remaining/ sit and discuss/ the reflections.” Aware that he is presenting perennial human questions in new imagery, Homolka lets his metaphors do the work so that the craft, not cleverness, shines through.

June 15, 2016

"Everywhere in heaven's meadows/ Aryans jack each other off." So opens this debut collection's first poem, "Goshen," whose title references the region of ancient Egypt inhabited by the Israelites. Then it's a quick spin through Homolka's spare, sculpted lines from the collection of Jews' permits to the six-day war to "emaciated lovers" receiving stars from the backs of chariots. Clearly, history, and particularly Jewish history, will be the topic of this Kathryn A. Morton Prize winner, and clearly the language will be punchy and irreverent. How do we live with the burdens of history? "It isn't like that Horace Life stresses us out," says one poem in response to the classic poet's placidity; elsewhere, "I can't write off the gamey/ smell of events." VERDICT Refreshing, energetic work; many readers will enjoy.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.