Transcendence Beyond the Brutal

Rachel Neve-Midbar’s debut book of poetry, Salaam of Birds, is a fundamental reckoning between the intensity of life in Israel and the earthy beauty of the desert: water, sand, flowers, fruit. The poems within the collection speak to the transformation that comes from holding disparate elements that comprise her homeland. The book’s title phrase borrows from the eminent poet Mahmoud Darwish, who so often evokes Eden in his metaphors for Palestine; the remnants of a paradise lost are also prevalent in Salaam of Birds as Neve-Midbar wrestles with the inherent violence of the Israeli homeland.

Salaam of Birds by Rachel Neve-Midbar. Tebot Bach, 2020. 125 pages. $17.

A constant backdrop to the verses, the desert landscape is replete with the paradox of a life and death struggle, echoing a tension present throughout the collection. Neve-Midbar’s use of Hebrew in the text provides a window for readers, crafting a profound cultural geography that both welcomes native speakers and stirs questions and mystery for those less familiar with the language. The Hebrew emulates a central refrain in the Israeli-Palestinian lived experience: the continual encounter and interaction with the idea of otherness at the heart of the conflict. By choosing not to italicize her Hebrew words, she maintains the cadence of the lines, immersing the reader into the history, brutality and beauty of life in Israel. 

Neve-Midbar intersperses the specter of violence with tenderness and keen observations, sifting out the miraculous from the mundane. In her concluding poem of the collection, “White Flesh, Yellow Dust,” she focuses on “a chamomile cluster”: 

They rest, white flesh

and yellow dust in my palm, dust
on my tongue, dust.

I haven’t heard a human voice for days

The juxtaposition of loneliness with the close scrutiny of the small flowers weaves a mournful longing, which permeates the entire collection.

Neve-Midbar’s gaze moves seamlessly between past and future, in “Glass in a Hailstorm” she watches “these girls, my girls” with anticipatory grief and terror, acknowledging the inevitable difficulty of this desert home:

Soon enough they too

Will wake to the pop of a stun grenade,

Learn to run long distances in mud,

Make their way guided by stars

Their lives fragile

As glass in a hailstorm.

In “Pure Water Poured,” a poem dedicated to Ruth Fogel, who died in an attack, Neve-Midbar describes an avnet tied around her lifeless waist. In my ignorance, I query the word “avnet,” expecting to find the cultural reference; instead, numerous links to a multinational corporation that manufactures electronics comes up. Avnet at one time contributed antennas to our U.S. World War II efforts. When I finally manage to find the meaning of avnet, a waistband worn by ancient Israelite priests, I notice my brief investigation has touched on the very tension that Neve-Midbar continually examines: the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the beautiful and the sacred with the instruments of war and death. 

The confusion inherent in violent conflict, especially in groups so intimately entangled as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is evident in verses like the below from “Moonless Night”:

Voices

Rise out

Of the wadi,

Like radio signals,

    Fading

In and out.

I can’t tell,

Hebrew, Arabic?

In the above lines, Neve-Midbar signals to the reader the absurdity and the uncertainty of a war where lines constantly blur, where boundaries are endlessly changing. Her poetry often references the fear apparent in everyday life, but it no longer emanates from a Jewish and Arab conflict; rather, the fears she writes about are those of life and death, dark and dawn.  A visceral sense of danger comes through in the detailed imagery she uses to enliven these heavy themes, as in “Uncoupling” where she writes of “Velcro ripped from a flak jacket, // the clatter of a clip set free / from an M-16.” 

Much of the third section of the book focuses on fear as seen through the eyes of a mother, how we relearn old fears in new ways as parents. “The text message says: The night was white. / Its OK. / Everyone is safe. // But no one is safe,” writes Neve-Midbar in “Mother Lament,” later adding,

We mothers can do nothing

But hold each other across the divide

Of your shrouded bodies.

This portion of the book, focused on children, is especially strong in its emotional evocation. The poem “Searching For Our Stolen Sons” reads as an elegy, harkening to the crucifixion by quoting the words of Christ: “…Hashem, Hashem, why / have you forsaken me?” With this allusion to a sacrificed son, Neve-Midbar unites our mourning with an iconic motherly grief. Dogs are lingering, looking for bodies. Mary is watching, waiting, as her son dies on the cross. Neve-Midbar is examining both the well-known and the overlooked. By highlighting the loss of life in unexpected, chaotic moments of routine living, she enjoins us in her vigilance.

Bright curiosity and unearthing underscore many of Neve-Midbar’s poems, and the book concludes with a “Coda” comprised of letter fragments about life in Israel that leave the reader with additional questions about her experiences there, a hunger to know more about the strangeness of a delicate and brutal world she has created in verse. Out of the pieces of an uneasy peace and conflict, laced with suffering, Neve-Midbar endeavors to create longing and splendor that punctuates the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis. 

In “Life Lessons,” Neve-Midbar offers the advice of the landscape:

And here’s the thing they never taught you:

To leave behind only

What can be gathered and buried,

…

Here is exactly what you were taught:

To allow those around you

To survive

While you hold

The grenade to your belly

As if it was your own cold heart.

More than anything, the poetry in Salaam of Birds urges us to closer observation—witness—as well as survival, calling readers through depictions of blood and death to the exuberance of living amid peril and strife. All the while, Neve-Midbar emphasizes the liminality of life among the increasing lists of dead and dying. The reader is left with questions about not only her homeland, but what it means to reconcile life as both subtle and extraordinary. What fleeting glimpses of the sublime lurk in the dark corners of our day-to-day experiences, and how does the observation of beauty amidst such prolific pain define who we are?