The New Nudity

by Hadara Bar-Nadav

Hadara Bar-Nadav’s radiant new collection of poetry, The New Nudity, shocks everyday objects to life. In these chiseled, electrically-charged poems, a ladder, wineglass, and spine ignite into being. With a nod to Francis Ponge, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Neruda, Bar-Nadav’s poems have a heartbeat all their own, small miracles that haunt and heave.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2017

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of strange, fragmentary poems-- the big idea is that they are either about body parts or objects, and then sort of interrogate these subjects from a fractured, lyric, POV. So a poem about a thumb describes what a thumb looks like, but also what it means (opposable thumbs separate man from beast, etc). Even though it looks at things from multiple angles, these poems don't exhaust the objects, and they tend to stand mostly independent of the poems that surround them (with the notable exception of those poems in the book's second section that deal with the holocaust). Others, like "Shadow" track similar terrain, but maybe a little less successfully-- some of these have a more obvious resonance (a poem like "Diamond," which explores family history via the Holocaust (something Bar-Nadar said when I heard her read) and others feel a little less immediate, more like she's trying to make something happen instead of having it happen naturally. It's a solid collection-- Bar-Nadar's line is interesting, she finds strange, haunting things to say about most of her subjects. Not every poem is a winner, but the ratio is on the right side, to be sure.

[Hope Fletcher-Sibbald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hadara Bar Nadav's collection is a beautiful meditation on those mundane items that we otherwise ignore. She brings to life these items she writes about and extrapolates powerfully intergenerational issues. I loved this book so much.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty simple series of image poems, but some descriptions are so vivid and cool so it gets four stars!

[Krystal Galvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable, skilled object poems. I could not put this down!

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The question, for Sartre, was (re: Ponge) would this be the new phenomenology of the unconscious, this Pongean attention re: things.

[Judith Arendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bar-Nadav took ordinary life things and turned them into unique poems. It was an interesting concept to write about. It was like undoing a shoelace to try and understand the poems. I guess that was some fun in of itself. It just did not captivate me. I appreciate the poetry and the concept. I would continue reading other things by this author, if given the chance.