Getting Out of the Roman Bath: Poetry by Susan Comninos
This week we’re pleased to feature a poem by Susan Comninos, “Rome Visits When I’m in the Bath.” The poem is a bit of a maze. On the surface there’s the juxtaposition of Jewish and Christian identities, but then more layers begin to emerge. Do the two identities refer to different modes of inspiration, to routes through which the free-associative mind travels? Or is it about the unavoidable assimilation and intrusion that comes as “dull” banging? Then again, contemplating the two religions, the author finds herself in the bath — a long-standing symbol of Roman wealth and leisure. The poem’s language is twisted and elusive but that, perhaps, is the point: The poet’s meanings cannot be, as it were, nailed down.
Susan Comninos’s poetry has appeared in TriQuarterly Online, the Forward, Quarterly West, Lilith, Tikkun and “The Blueline Anthology” (Syracuse University Press, 2004), among other publications. Last year she won Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi Poetry Contest.
Rome Visits When I’m in the Bath
knocking or nailing?
—a crucifix at the door,
or hammer
from the flat
below? what a thought
for a girl
who plans to hang
mezuzahs by the bed,
dangle instruments
of tenor, or better:
rim the door
with artifact. That’s
all; no more
to confess. Yet, hear
the lush
loud banging, trite
as terror, as the bore
of a Roman sword; heavy
and dull as a wooden
tale: immense—
and just as leaden.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO