MAKING PROGRESS
By Janet Bowdan
Finishing Line Press
finishinglinepress.com
Northampton poet Janet Bowdan casts a wry look at relationships, parenthood, expectations of women, and day-to-day life in her newest collection, “Making Progress.”
As one reviewer notes, Bowdan “sings into catastrophe and intrigue … ‘Making Progress’ is the story of our evolution, from leaving the cave to changing the course of rivers and burning fields.”
In the prose poem “The Year,” Bowdan examines a love affair gone wrong from oblique angles: “When you did not come for dinner, I ate leftovers for days. When / you missed dessert, I finished all the strawberries … When you sent back my poems, I made them into earrings / and wore them to work … While
you had dinner with / me, I walked past the window and looked in. You were not there.”
A trip to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., becomes an opportunity to imagine doing some cloak and dagger work herself: “You would like to wear a fedora but that might make you look / Suspicious so you refrain. You do try on a pair of sunglasses with / A mustache attached. You do crawl through the ductwork quietly, / Eavesdropping on the enemy …”
And in “The Imaginary Housewives,” she reflects on the lessons of traditional women’s roles that she absorbed by reading cookbooks, where Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, the Maxwell House woman and others all had lessons to give.
“I didn’t know about Mrs. Busywoman, / So rushed she didn’t have time to cook her family’s dinner / But thanks to Quick Frozen Foods she could zap / Something delicious in no time!”
Bowdan, who teaches creative writing and English at Western New England University, also edits a literary journal there, “Common Ground Review.” She’s published her poems in many different journals, including “Free State Review,” and her work has been included in the 2000 edition of “The Best American Poetry.”
THE SECRET OF CARLOS ROMANUS
By Esther Kosofsky
Illustrations by Chana Min Hahar
Hachai Publishing
hachai.com
Moshe Levi, just 15 years old, is living in Amsterdam, Holland in 1639 when he’s entrusted with an important mission: traveling to Africa aboard a ship to secure a delivery of cork for the trading company he works for. He’s taking the place of his late father, and he’s determined to provide for the other members of his family: his mother and his younger siblings, Yosef and Miriam.
Moshe’s mother, though, worries that, aside from the dangers Moshe may face at sea, he may get back too late to spend Pesach (Passover) with the family — so she gives him a parcel with a few things, like a flask of ceremonial wine, that he can use to celebrate on his own if he needs to.
Thus begins Moshe’s adventures in “The Secret of Carlos Romanus,” a historical novel for elementary school students that explores the fate of Spanish Jews in the era of the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Written by Esther Kosofsky, an educator and administrator at the Lubavitcher Yeshiva Academy in Longmeadow, “The Secret of Carlos Romanus” is based on a story that Kosofsky’s late father, a rabbi, would tell the family at Passover.
Moshe’s journey to Africa begins on a rough note, as he battles sea sickness on a wooden sailing ship from Holland into the Atlantic Ocean. As the ship heads south past the coast of Spain, en route to the Strait of Gibraltar, he remembers the stories he’s heard of Spanish Jews forbidden to practice their religion or forced to leave the country — or to practice Judaism in secret and risk being jailed or tortured.
“I can’t imagine what it is like for Jews still in Spain, may Hashem [God] watch over them,” he thinks.
Then a terrible storm destroys the ship and Moshe finds himself alone, adrift in the ocean, all his possessions gone. He washes up on a beach and discovers he’s in Spain, where he must now conceal his identity. He secures a job working for the owner of an inn who helps nurse him back to health, and he’s determined to earn enough money to pay for his return to Amsterdam; meantime, he also must find ways to keep Shabbat and eat kosher food without raising suspicion.
And as Passover approaches, he’s also determined to find a Jewish family in town that’s practicing in secret and with whom he can spend the holy time. He watches people as they come to the marketplace, checking carefully to see what food they buy as one key to their identity. Could it be that the wealthy local lord might be the one he can turn to for help?
“The Secret of Carlos Romanus” is ultimately a story of friendship, faith, family and trust that also aims to give young readers a glimpse of the crisis Jews faced in Spain from the 15th through 17th centuries.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.