Solecism

by Rosebud Ben-Oni

In Rosebud Ben-Oni’s poems SOLECISM, Amy King contents: “You've never heard from Mexico in this register. Nor moved through the East Village and Jerusalem, Syria and Lebanon, with a guide who spies ‘what grows in broken concrete.' This is exploration and revelation via the road less traveled. Where she finally lands pales beside how she sees the world through her tongue. The journey is all.”

Solecism is the nonstandard or ungrammatical usage, a breach in etiquette, or any error, impropriety or inconsistency; these poems, according to Alexander Long, “confront the darker side of multi-culturalism, the vertiginous disorientation of being neither this nor that, neither here nor there, essentially being exiled in her own homelands. “ Gritty yet lyrical, Kamilah Aisha Moon says “these brazen, keen explorations are lit by intriguing desires that mirror and unearth our own, fueled by a deft imagination and wielding of language that rings deeply true. The world needs these tough angel anthems.”

Drawing upon the author’s Jewish, Middle Eastern and Mexican heritage, Stephan Delbos remarks: “Her poetry is aware of the world's urgencies, and, troubled, engages them in a barbed dream-language of vengeful longing, a language as fragmented as our world, achieving a startled and startling wholeness from the vivid pieces.” Andre Yang observes: “There is a great fierceness in these poems that is balanced with just the right amount of tenderness” In this stunning debut, as Marian Haddad claims, “Ben-Oni is the dark bird— that sparrow, singing.”

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2013

About the author

Rosebud Ben-Oni is the author of several collections of poetry, including the forthcoming The Last Great Adventure is You (Alice James Books, 2027), a sequel to If This is the Age We End Discovery (2021), which won the Alice James Award and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Paramount commissioned her video essay “My Judaism is a Wild Unplace" for a national media campaign for Jewish Heritage Month, and her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11th Memorial. Most recently, her poem “When You Are the Arrow of Time” was commissioned and filmed by the Museum of Jewish Heritage— A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. She performed at Carnegie Hall on International Holocaust Memorial Day, as part “We Are Here: Songs from The Holocaust.” She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Queens Arts Fund, Queens Council on the Arts, Café Royal Cultural Foundation and CantoMundo. Her work appears in POETRY, The Writer's Chronicle, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, NPR’s The Slowdown, AGNI, Poetry Society of America (PSA), The Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, Poetry Daily, Tin House, among others.

Reviews

[Joseph Michael Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

So great; must compile my thoughts about this one!!

I should mention this for sure: Rosebud is easily one of my favorite poets right now!

[Janet Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poems defies description, but is especially beautiful for its identifying the liminal places in our own identities. I was taken aback by its masterful use of description (Ben-Oni is a Jedi master of language) and the way I felt while I was reading these poems. Well worth the purchase price, Solecism is a good gift for people who don't fit into anyone's cultural binary choice of "either/or".

[The Jewish Book Council]

Review by Eleanor Ehrenkranz for the Jewish Book Council.