As Jerry Seinfeld is known for observational humor, it could be said that Yehoshua November specializes in observational poetry. But neither Seinfeld’s comedy nor November’s work is really about nothing. His new book The Concealment of Endless Light deals with getting a B- on a Bereishit test as a child, reflecting on the Tree of Life shooting, in which 11 Jews were murdered, and the world’s obsession with celebrity.
The New Jersey resident, 45, is originally from Pittsburgh. His 2010 debut “God’s Optimism” was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His second work “Two Worlds Exist” was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and Paterson Poetry Prize.
November, a father of five, has taught writing at Touro University for nearly two decades and teaches writing at Rutgers University as well. He noted some students raise an eyebrow on the first day, partly due to his chasidic appearance, which includes a long beard he hasn’t trimmed in 22 years.
“It’s definitely unusual both in the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world,” November told The Jewish Press. “There aren’t many chasidic poets. However, when I teach students creative writing, the emphasis is on helping them tell their stories, so I think my appearance quickly fades to the background.” November sees teaching students to write clearly and succinctly “as a way to help them live richer and more introspective lives.”
One of the most powerful poems in his new book contains only two sentences. “On The World’s Continuity Via Divine Speech” reads:
“G-d is like a celebrity
making small talk
at a dinner party.
Everyone hangs on His words,
and if he were to stop speaking,
the evening would end.”
He said it is baffling that people worship the rich and famous; in the poem, however, he uses this obsession to illustrate a mystical point about the universe’s dependency on G-d.
“According to the Kabbalists and chasidic teachings, the world’s subsistence is so dependent on G-d continuing to speak it into being that it’s almost like a house of cards,” November said. “Without G-d’s constant infusion of Divine energy, the world would revert to nothingness. Metaphorically, you can imagine a dinner party where everyone comes to hear a celebrity, as if reality hinges on each of his utterances.”
His best poem, “Teachers and Students” features a Vietnamese student with one hand and her music teacher who doubted that her prosthetic would give her the sufficient pressure “to squeeze out the staccato notes at the upcoming violin recital.” It ends with the disappointment of a 6’7 football player who, after receiving a failing paper, runs out of the room, then comes back to shut the lights off on the rest of the class.
“It was a bit disruptive, but he wasn’t violent,” November said. “It’s good that he cared about his grade.”
November said he was raised in what you might call a traditional/modern Orthodox home and later was inspired by and identified with Chabad due to his warm experiences at Chabad of Binghamton and his attraction to chasidic teachings. After finishing his MFA in poetry at University of Pittsburgh in 2003, November studied at a Chabad kollel in Morristown for two years. He said that around 1987, like many, he got a dollar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and he has a picture of his grandfather receiving honey cake from the Rebbe on the eve of Yom Kippur in 1982.
He said a common theme in his new book is “Faith against the backdrop of Jewish suffering and the interplay of the soul and the body.”
When he heard there was a vigil at a Pittsburgh JCC marking the October 2018 murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue, less than a block from where he and his wife once lived, he wanted to write about the tragedy. In “There is Only One Story,” a poem about the synagogue shooting, November refers to a kabbalistic metaphor that describes the Jewish people throughout history as comprising a single, collective body. He writes: “The Body bears more wounds than we want to recall. No one can explain how it limps forward but has not faltered.”
Can you really teach someone to become good at poetry?
“I think students can learn certain craft practices that make them better writers, and everyone has rich memories and observations to share,” November said. “I don’t think students should obsess over becoming ‘great.’ Usually, putting that kind of pressure on writers’ shoulders closes the doorway to creativity. I try to assign spontaneous prompts that help students sidestep overthinking. Each person is unique. A good poetry teacher tries to serve as a guide who helps a student embody his or her individual voice.”
November said while poetry “will likely remain a marginalized genre” compared to fiction, those who are passionate about poetry work hard to hone their craft and take great joy in the way poetry provides a vehicle for communicating poignant truths in a compressed space.
In terms of teaching his students, he says he tries to demystify poetry.
“I largely share accessible contemporary poetry with my students, and I try to dispel the myth that a poem is like a riddle you have to decode,” November said. “I try to show them you can write and read accessible poetry, work that is rich with metaphors and imagery but whose meaning resides on the surface of the page. Many people believe they don’t like poetry, but that’s because they assume they can’t understand it. They’re pleasantly surprised to learn contemporary poetry – especially narrative poetry – does not have to be dense or abstruse.”
November’s work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun, Tikkun and on national public radio. He has won Prairie Schooner’s Bernice Slote Award and the London School of Jewish Studies’s poetry competition. He has also earned the praise of leading contemporary poets such as Ilya Kaminsky, who calls November “one of our most brilliant Jewish American poets of this moment.”
His new book tells of joyous times, too, when he collected baseball cards and had Fruity Pebbles for breakfast. He said he still has a Sandy Koufax rookie card, as the famed Jewish lefty once refused to pitch on Yom Kippur and remains the best-known Jewish athlete of all-time.
November’s marriage also suggests that chasidic Jews can be romantic. When he proposed to his now wife, Ahuva, he did so by climbing up a rickety ladder to her window.
In his poem “Notes on Marriage,” he is thankful for something as simple as his wife making him a sandwich of lettuce, humus and cheese. He notes that “G-d split the first couple into male and female selves. All our lives we ache for wholeness.”
November’s poetry is not only powerful because of its specificity, but its seamless fusing of the mundane and the grave, the comical and the deadly serious. His poems are vivid and cinematic, where we see flashbacks from his life in which his wordplay, if dumbed down, could read as portions of a screenplay.
While the book employs many Jewish references, a reader of any faith or none will likely enjoy November’s work, even if disagreeing with some elements. He also often combines the literal and the mystical in poems like “The Visit.” Here, he recounts putting tefillin on a man whose wife committed suicide years earlier, a man who asks November if he is a bad Jew because he doesn’t keep kosher and only goes to synagogue sporadically. “The Visit” recalls and contrasts with November’s poem “Rabbi W” in which the clergyman took the younger November and classmates to a Minnesota Twins game and told him that tefillin cry when you don’t put them on.
November said he opted not to get semicha because a spiritual mentor told him, “There are many rabbis but few chasidic professors. As a professor, you will reach Jews that a rabbi may never inspire.”
