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NANCY SHIFFRIN'S BOOKS
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Signed inscribed copies of my books, THE HOLY LETTERS (poems)MY JEWISH NAME (creative prose) and WHAT SHE COULD NOT NAME (poems)
are available at nshiffrin@earthlink.net. To buy now scroll all the way down and click on NANCY SHIFFRIN'S EMAIL. For more
information about my books keep reading this page. For information about CREATIVE WRITING SERVICES or ANAIS NIN click below.
For information about computer services go the CREATIVE WRITING SERVICES page and click on David Bean's Health Wealth and
Wisdom. To buy from the publisher go to Booksurge.com. More of my books are listed on Amazon.com. This page is still in process.
Thank you for your patience.
from Learning the Language I learn The Holy Letters which parted the waters divided Heaven from Earth the letters without which I cannot know myself or place myself in time. I struggle to recognize shapes, imitate sounds. I yearn for number and story. I must be careful to look through my bifocals at just the right angle. I am too easily distracted by children skating, speech spiced with Armenian, Russian, Farsi, unwitting recipients of the mercy I beg for. by Nancy Shiffrin copyright 2000 THE HOLY LETTERS Booksurge.com 2000 first published in RELIGION AND LITERATURE 1998 THE HOLY LETTERS and MY JEWISH NAME evolved out of my Union Insitute dissertation, THE EVERCHANGING AND THE EVERLASTING: One Jewish Awakening in the Culture of Multiculturalism. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI, 1994. The Union Institute is a non-traditional fully accredited Ph.D. program which allows adult learners to pursue personally meaningful inquiries. My work on Jewish-American women authors has been presented at The Western and Mid-West Jewish Studies Associations,The National Women's Studies Association, The Workman's Circle, The Santa Monica Public Library, the Society for Humanistic Judaism, The Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Los Angeles, The University of Northern Iowa. To schedule a reading, lecture or workshop click on my email below. Excerpts from a review of THE HOLY LETTERS and MY JEWISH NAME greatunpublished.com 2000 and 2002 by Natania Rosenfeld, Knox College SHOFAR The Mid-West Jewish Studies Association 3/8/2004 Nancy Shiffrin's poetry, collected in THE HOLY LETTERS, is reminiscent of such feminist poets as Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde and especially because of the highlighted Jewish themes Adrienne Rich. THE HOLY LETTERS is a book to set alongside these other writers and to cherish for richness of emotions and vividness of metaphor. There is no shrinking or prudery here; the author confronts the body frankly, patriarchal repression with rightful anger. The contemporary world, of environmental depredation, poverty, inner-city suffering, is harsh and cruel, and the poet responds with great sadness and a search for hope ...Shiffrin clearly falls into a tradition of politicized Jewish poets alert to abuses of power. The little girl who speaks to us in her naive child's voice of mysteries such as the Passover story, neighborhood Jew-hatred, and the gas chambers, mutates into the grown woman who feels within herself the universality of human cruelty... This is a poet who clearly feels 'Tikkun Olam' to be her duty, yet sees that repair is a Sisyphean task...Her poems are always searing, sometimes lovely, and worth the reading. "In MY JEWISH NAME Shiffrin's topics include the response of minority readers to the literature of a majority culture: figures,of Jewish women in particular, missing from the literary canon, the unheard stories of women's lives. She weaves a compelling web of themes and raises thought-provoking questions. She is admirable for taking on an issue avoided by the 'mainstream' multiculturalists: the frequent dismissal of Jewishness as a valid minority culture by those who class Jews as white and therefore privileged...She finishes her slim book of essays with a rumination on her 'Jewish Journey', a journey she considers neverending but perpetually rewarding. 'I find myself in a wonderland of opportunity for traditional Jewish learning, still struggling with Hebrew, reading as much modern Jewish literature as I possibly can, applying my discoveries in a variety of contexts, raising, freshly, I hope, the age-old questions of Belonging and Exile'. Amen: may we all continue to raise those questions, the central questions of Jewish Identity and the vital ones for our relationship to a postcolonial, globalized, yet fragmented world".
Morning Run
full moon 4:00 A.M. platinum in the black sky hurtling round the earth seeds sing in the ground lava shifts flows gas erupts the shocking waves mist rises water rushes so many green shades five different bird songs red-tailed hawk circle mating bright yellow finches light the evergreen stone face in red rock wildflowers jut from crags sun shatters clouds umber branches lace full moon setting at daybreak in the distant hills
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