Lullaby

by Hadara Bar-Nadav

The poems in Lullaby (with Exit Sign), explore the very nature of the elegy as rite, memorial, mechanism for healing, and raw utterance. Bar-Nadav asks, what is the shape of grief—its forms, silences, and sounds? The muscular music of her language and whip-sharp syntax join forces with startling imagery. Prose poems dominate the collection, held in place by the phantom scaffolding of lineated verse in which the poet listens for her father who “knocks on a little paper door.”

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2013

Reviews

[erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

faves were The Hour of Lead and Death Is a Dialogue

[Amanda Conover · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the coolest collections I’ve read in a while. Bar-Nadav does something really innovative with language and imagery in Lullaby (with Exit Sign). These poems discuss an over-discussed topic (death/mortality) in a new way, giving new life (no pun intended) to both Dickinson and to the common experience of losing a parent. The first section was harder for me to read, but after that I became hooked.

[Neha · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Leave your shattered shadows // behind. I’ll be the doorway / that watches you go.”

Wow - I am so moved. This is my new favorite collection of poetry. Bar-Nadav creates this strange, dream-like atmosphere through her poetry; the subject matter tends to be harsh and raw but her writing is so musical. Beautiful.

[Sam Albala · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To be alive is to be haunted; to be dead is to haunt”

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her third and most recent book of poetry, Lullaby (with Exit Sign), Bar-Nadav presents an intense, in-the-moment outpouring of grief over her father’s physical decline and death. Woven throughout the collection is an unexpected voice, that of Emily Dickinson. The majority of poems are titled after an Emily Dickinson line. Each also includes an italicized Dickinson line in the text that is subtly inserted to advance the poem. The inclusion of Dickinson’s work deepens and complicates Bar-Nadav’s expressions.

Quoting Emily Dickinson, one of the most revered writers in English, brings the flood of associations connected with her. This inclusion moves these poems beyond Bar-Nadav’s overwhelming grief over the loss of her father and becomes a larger examination of how loss and other human vulnerabilities are dealt with through language. This, ultimately, is the book’s central concern.

For both of these poets, language is a resource and a restriction in responding to loss. Without sacrificing the intensity of her personal grief and pain, Bar-Nadav asks us to consider how language is used as a response to it.

Here is a more complete review I wrote for the Kenyon Review Online: http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online...

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Lullaby (with Exit Sign)

Lamb


My family destroys the lamb.
The lamb destroys my family.

I pass out, hoofed child,
on your moist, hot back.

You softly count the knives.
You sharpen each with your bleat.

You continue bleating until
my ears cry. Make it stop.

Make it stop, my sweet lamb.
I need you. Otherwise, hunger

would mince my shriveled heart.
You wouldn't run away

with your warm thighs
wrapped in lovely white curls.

You are a work of art,
an orchestra, a church.

God know the tender
meat of your hocks,

your pink mouth, lashes
like a young girl's curling

over black eyes that look
at me without recognition,

without a blood thought.
I am seized by the young

daughter I lost. I am grass.
Grief. The oven opening

wide as you drift to sleep.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it’s because my grandpa died this summer and death still feels startlingly close, but I was so connected with Bar-Nadav’s language and imagery. Her dad father seemed to hover beside me. Her words are so musical, so easy to read. She caresses the most gentle alliterations and rhyme sequences. No prose poem is more than half a page. With poems this readable, how could you not take my advice?

I was assigned to write an essay on this collection for my prose poetry class. Another classmate of mine commented that she worried she would summon the dead by reading the poems out loud. Read them out loud; summon the dead. If anything, you’ll give yourself some chills in this abnormally warm winter*.

Standout poems for me were

*Western Washington’s trees are pushing out buds. I sweat when I walk to school. Climate change is upon us.