Kirjahaku

In Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island, award-winning poet Lenore Weiss embodies the themes of loss, transformation and re-invention that are integral to life and to her work. Poems celebrate the author’s Jewish Hungarian upbringing. Survival, negotiation, and migration play a vital role in these poems about family and love. Technology and its role on relationships is another thread in her work, and Weiss has had practical applications of both during her professional career as a content developer, most recently for Apple Computer. These mysteries of family, politics, and technology build a powerful debut that details one woman’s migrations through life’s spheres and how the connections expand and weave themselves together into one functioning network.

The Golem is a collection that speaks with the voice of a feminist writer who stands on the shoulders of her ancestors, Jewish Hungarian immigrants; "I am not one, but two generations erased." Spanning an acrobatic cast of characters, the writing is colloquial and also celebrates inventive structures. The book unfolds in three movements: Past Perfect, Present Tense, and Future Fictitious, charting a course through love, grief, and death to find the courage in being mortal. These poems travel across the United States to visit New York City kitchens, Silicon Valley cubicles, Louisiana bayous, with humorous dips into pop culture, including American TV's Judge Judy, Starbucks, and online dating. Whether wondering about Spinoza, or histories of violence, the poems are written with a fine eye to detail. The last section is a stunning sonnet sequence that totally reinvents the golem myth borrowed from Jewish folklore and the mystical tradition.