A Caw

Poetry. Art. "'Ever need a savior?' Joel Newberger's A CAW opens 'like a rose' -- 'like a rabbi giving birth' -- anguished and ecstatic 'flesh aching' -- the body's racket disciplined line by taut line into saying the self -- the self in search, in service to the Book. 'Make space teethe' is the poet's charge, till book and body are one utterance, one cry, and 'veins become / Torah's locket.' Here truth is wrested from each letter of the aleph-bet, with the delicate and specific shock of 'a burning petal.'"--Billie Chernicoff