Lullaby (with Exit Sign)
A lullaby is meant to soothe, but as in nursery rhymes and fairy tales, a dark note is often struck. This counterpoint, this irony, this paradox is the catalyst and subject of the latest collection from award-winning poet Bar-Nadav. These are fiercely mournful poems that rage not only against death but also against the placid everyday world; they are the poetic equivalent of plates smashed, glasses hurled against walls. These are poems of lament and protest, often hallucinatory, sometimes surreal, as in “Prayer Is the Little Implement” with the lines “Little Woe Weep has lost her sleep, or / a hack of pills went up a hill to fetch a pain of daughter.” As the speaker recalls the agonized hospital vigil with all the torments of medical protocols, her struggle to come to terms with her father’s decline and death causes the eruption of strange and provocative pairings: “azure decomposure,” “radiant violence.” Lithe and percussive, furious and clever, taunting and disquieting, these elegiac poems, many of them exceptionally mysterious prose poems, subtly pay homage to Emily Dickinson in their poise and lash, their resplendent, if disconcerting, images and disquieting perceptions. --Donna Seaman