Shipbreaking
Robin Beth Schaer Image by twitter
By Adam Rovner December 27, 2016
Lines and line breaks are poetry’s structural units, in much the same way that timbered planks — and the gaps that must be filled between them — create a ship’s hull. Fittingly, the rapturous poems in Robin Beth Schaer’s “Shipbreaking” are fashioned from taut lines joined by tension. Nautical imagery of wind, waves and wreck suffuse this volume. The horrors and wonders of the natural world—extinctions, disasters, migrations — and the fragility of human life are commingled. Schaer refracts the personal through the political in ways reminiscent of Yehuda Amichai, whom she cites as an influence. And traces of Jewish thought are inscribed across Schaer’s verse, as in “Fear,” which draws inspiration from the Talmud to fashion a psychological bestiary. She may be the only contemporary poet who can turn a contrite lover into a coelacanth, or depict toasting bread with so much sexual tension.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
