Wolf in the Suitcase by D. Dina Friedman

(2 customer reviews)

$14.99

 

Dina Friedman voices her poems so casually, only careful readers will wholly appreciate her unruly imagination. Syntactically, a poem like “We Are Stuck in October” destabilizes us right off the bat: “the remnants of leaves/shellacked on the slippery stoop test our dogged/tenacity.”  By poem’s end, we’ve encountered a funeral, a Yankees game, athletes’ acts of conscience during the national anthem, and the ecological perils threatening “these slippery, tilted times.”  Each poem in this book takes us on a journey, many involving Friedman’s Jewish heritage, deeply but skeptically engaged.  “Munich” finds present-day remnants of a murderous history “where fires consumed my ancestors’ hair”; while “The Tenth Plague” gives up-to-the-minute idioms to an Egyptian firstborn harassed by “the Guy [who] hardened the Pharaoh’s heart.”  If Friedman’s default tone is disabused irony, she’s not adverse to praise, as in the stunning “Letter to God from Florida.”  From the itchy intimacy of extracting a child’s head lice to “the sobbing guitar” of the blues, this poet, in her lovely debut, gives thanks for all the world affords. Readers will thank her back.

–Steven Cramer, author of Clangings and Goodbye to the Orchard

 

The stuff of dreams and nightmares, D. Dina Friedman‘s poems invite us to let go our ordinary ways of seeing and remembering.  Memory here is a Wolf in the Suitcase, “. . . wolf in all I do not dare / to say, biting at the zippered close; / the suitcase does its blinded, // muzzled dance . . .”  Although her complex work is seasoned with dark familial memories of Jewish experience, it is also peppered with a dry, wry humor: “Perhaps, if you stroke your beard, it might whiten back / to the time of Moses.”  And “God loves us because she has no other choice.”  Finally, in “A Letter to God from Florida,” the wit and the complexity come together: “Seriously, // thank you for the concept of infinity; / and this nitty vacation sand, shifting hot // as I dig my elbows down, raise my sacred torso, / stand to face the foam.” Friedman celebrates the real world, and infuses it with spirit.

–Pat Schneider, founder, Amherst Writers & Artists, and author, six volumes of poems, Writing Alone and With Others and How the Light Gets In, both from Oxford University Press.

 

 

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Description

Wolf in the Suitcase

by D. Dina Friedman

$14.99, paper

978-1-63534-858-3

2019

Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, D. Dina Friedman has published widely in literary journals She is also the author of two award-winning young adult novels, Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) She has an MFA from Lesley University and teaches at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Visit her website at http://www.ddinafriedman.com.

2 reviews for Wolf in the Suitcase by D. Dina Friedman

  1. Daisy Mathias, Producer, Poetry à la Carte, WMUA-Amherst

    Comment for her book: In this gem of a chapbook, each poem stands alone but also relates to the whole, just as each poem comes full circle within itself. Many of the poems reflect Ms. Friedman’s particular heritage, yet she makes the experience universal. Touches of humor delight us. The poems connect with the reader on many levels: the telling details put us immediately into a certain place and time, but also the poems contain an unexpected turn in them — a kind of mystical door opens, and we get a glimpse of something beyond.

  2. Joanna R. (verified owner)

    Wolf in the Suitcase is evocative, engaging, and deeply personal! A set of narrative poetry that everyone should get to know!

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