Through Michael Blumenthal’s eyes we gain a renewed,
childlike wonder at everything from plants, trees, and relationships to the most
fundamental word in our vocabulary: AND. Blumenthal uses the conjunction to
unify this collection and create a chanting, sonorous rhythm to his work. The
result is a book of poems-as-hymns-and-praises. Michael Blumenthal holds the
Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion
University. His other books include the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers
(HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), and the poetry collection Dusty Angel (BOA
Editions, Ltd., 1999), for which he was awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry
Award. Blumenthal’s new collection of poems, titled And, is the closest that
the stoicism of Ecclesiastes will come to getting a 21st-century makeover. In
it, there’s a time to laugh and cry, scatter stones and gather them up, and all
the rest. There’s no point, though, in toil and hope beyond that. After reading
these poems, which are designed with a cosmic sweep, you get the feeling that
Blumenthal’s plan is, as in Dylan Thomas’s poem, eventually just to go gentle
into that good night: Rage, rage against the dying of the light be damned.
–THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD Michael Blumenthal’s stunning new book, And, is an
Eliotic celebration of life in the world as continuum and progress. He achieves
this through a simple and seductive meditation upon the conjunction, and, and
the way it enriches the complexity of language as it shapes lived experience.
–The Montserrat Review