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Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020
Forty-four years in the making, Migrations is considered by critics to be a masterpiece of modern Mexican literature. Gloria Gervitz’s book is an epic journey in free verse through the individual and collective memories of Jewish women emigrants from Eastern Europe, a conversation that ranges across two thousand years of poetry, a bridge that spans the oracles of ancient Greece and the markets of modern Mexico, a prayer that blends the Jewish and Catholic liturgies, a Mexican woman’s reclamation through poetry of her own voice and erotic power. In its reach, audacity, and astonishing vitality, Gervitz’s extraordinary life’s work bears comparison to the achievements of HD, Lorine Niedecker, Ezra Pound, and Walt Whitman.
- GenresPoetry
304 pages, Paperback
Published November 2, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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November 21, 2022Trodde at jeg burde lese den sakte, men tror nå at jeg burde lest den fort.
May 14, 2023
Can’t claim to understand it, but it’s definitely beautiful. Wonderful find in CDMX.
March 11, 2024
the most gorgeous thesis prep
October 24, 2022
Honestly one can read the poem’s wonderful opening and then skip directly to page 162 where the second good part begins. In between there is a long dull sequence which is unbearably melodramatic and kind of repulsive in its egotism, despite the few instances of good poetry that shine on some pages.
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April 2, 20246 Oct 2021
B.A. Van Sise for the New York Journal of Books
When discussing poetry or art, perhaps it doesn’t make sense to focus on whether work is good or bad; taste is subjective. Some like Manet, some like Monet. It might be better, instead, to discuss whether the work is successful.
Gloria Gervitz’ Migrations, presented a second time and greatly amended from a previous 2004 release, is offered as an epic poem with, once again, a caressing translation by Mark Schafer. It is, perhaps, being released in a more receptive time, and to a more receptive audience: identity has become the star around which all contemporary poetry is obliged to revolve, and Gervitz here provides alluring bait: a narrative that crosses continents, genders, religions, and centuries.
One might politely question whether the 263-page book is an epic poem; the more direct will point out that it clearly isn’t. Here, several hundred poems, presented without breaks, interruptions , or intermissions tell the story of the latest half-century of a life, but also many that came before and perhaps a few to follow, in a stunning display of prolixity that for some, to be sure, might prove a slog.
However, that is entirely a matter of taste, and not of success. For Gervitz, Migrations is both a life’s work and a memory palace, a narrative pilgrimage through the lens of her own experience that is both alive and dead, both past and future.
There are two recurring, almost omnipresent themes here: Kaddish and the clitoris, mourning and masturbation, as Gervitz tries to touch all the parts and legacies the ancestors were kind enough to give us. There is nothing novel, of course, in the juxtaposition of the supposedly sacred and the purportedly profane, but there is something endearing and impressive in the way that Gervitz, here, offers Kaddish for the living and, through inheritance, masturbation for the dead. “I masturbate thinking of you/ the screech of seagulls the break of day she prays in one poem; I don’t even know the words of the Kaddish / I’ve lost my bearings,” she moans in another.
Here, there are no mysteries in our histories; there are many, many Kaddishes in migrations, and many, many deeply private explorations of self. The Kaddish here is far more the plaint of Allen Ginsburg than Amrom Gaon but so, too, is the ear and hand of the author.
“I wash my vulva clitoris hard and full / and my pleasure grows so intense / that i even pee on myself, she offers at one point. i push down my underpants/ pull the starched sheet over me/ and touch my young vulva/ slip my fingers in/ explore/ find the pleasure spot/ and linger there/ my fingers ever more nimble/ more precise/ i close my eyes and say filthy girl/saying it excites me/ and the feeling spreads/ takes me completely/ covers me completely/ and I am this body/ this rapture this vastness,” she writes at another. Surely for someone this is appealing, someone who is shocked or titillated by raw human sexuality, or who is for the first time introduced to erotic metaphor. But pressed hard against several millennia of Aramaic prayers and Yiddish exclamations, it feels at best like the sort of thing mocked on television, the eclectic and self-revering beat poet in a basement announcing random things to a crowd, or at worst like they’ve hired rabbis to write Letters to Penthouse.
“who is praying? is it me? / who is answering? / where do these words come from? / and who will say Kaddish for me?” Gervitz, at one point, asks into the ether, though we all know the answer: herself.
Still, there is much to praise here, intellectually, in particular the way Gervitz crosses cultures and generations, and the way that the work, spanning decades, changes tones, shapes. Ancestors live large here, and they, like the poems, change, just as faces change from one decade to the next, from one generation to the next.
In the end, the question reverts back to whether the book is successful, and the only truth is this: here, with the thanks of time and talent, Gervitz’ words have been placed into a serious translation, produced in a serious manner by a serious publisher. This is 46 years of someone’s life and someone’s work, and putting together such a book is a tremendous task. Is it successful? Well, this is a book put together by Gloria Gervitz, to express Gloria Gervitz, and to satisfy the artistic needs of Gloria Gervitz. In this it has fully, and unquestionably, succeeded.
B.A. Van Sise for the New York Journal of Books
When discussing poetry or art, perhaps it doesn’t make sense to focus on whether work is good or bad; taste is subjective. Some like Manet, some like Monet. It might be better, instead, to discuss whether the work is successful.
Gloria Gervitz’ Migrations, presented a second time and greatly amended from a previous 2004 release, is offered as an epic poem with, once again, a caressing translation by Mark Schafer. It is, perhaps, being released in a more receptive time, and to a more receptive audience: identity has become the star around which all contemporary poetry is obliged to revolve, and Gervitz here provides alluring bait: a narrative that crosses continents, genders, religions, and centuries.
One might politely question whether the 263-page book is an epic poem; the more direct will point out that it clearly isn’t. Here, several hundred poems, presented without breaks, interruptions , or intermissions tell the story of the latest half-century of a life, but also many that came before and perhaps a few to follow, in a stunning display of prolixity that for some, to be sure, might prove a slog.
However, that is entirely a matter of taste, and not of success. For Gervitz, Migrations is both a life’s work and a memory palace, a narrative pilgrimage through the lens of her own experience that is both alive and dead, both past and future.
There are two recurring, almost omnipresent themes here: Kaddish and the clitoris, mourning and masturbation, as Gervitz tries to touch all the parts and legacies the ancestors were kind enough to give us. There is nothing novel, of course, in the juxtaposition of the supposedly sacred and the purportedly profane, but there is something endearing and impressive in the way that Gervitz, here, offers Kaddish for the living and, through inheritance, masturbation for the dead. “I masturbate thinking of you/ the screech of seagulls the break of day she prays in one poem; I don’t even know the words of the Kaddish / I’ve lost my bearings,” she moans in another.
Here, there are no mysteries in our histories; there are many, many Kaddishes in migrations, and many, many deeply private explorations of self. The Kaddish here is far more the plaint of Allen Ginsburg than Amrom Gaon but so, too, is the ear and hand of the author.
“I wash my vulva clitoris hard and full / and my pleasure grows so intense / that i even pee on myself, she offers at one point. i push down my underpants/ pull the starched sheet over me/ and touch my young vulva/ slip my fingers in/ explore/ find the pleasure spot/ and linger there/ my fingers ever more nimble/ more precise/ i close my eyes and say filthy girl/saying it excites me/ and the feeling spreads/ takes me completely/ covers me completely/ and I am this body/ this rapture this vastness,” she writes at another. Surely for someone this is appealing, someone who is shocked or titillated by raw human sexuality, or who is for the first time introduced to erotic metaphor. But pressed hard against several millennia of Aramaic prayers and Yiddish exclamations, it feels at best like the sort of thing mocked on television, the eclectic and self-revering beat poet in a basement announcing random things to a crowd, or at worst like they’ve hired rabbis to write Letters to Penthouse.
“who is praying? is it me? / who is answering? / where do these words come from? / and who will say Kaddish for me?” Gervitz, at one point, asks into the ether, though we all know the answer: herself.
Still, there is much to praise here, intellectually, in particular the way Gervitz crosses cultures and generations, and the way that the work, spanning decades, changes tones, shapes. Ancestors live large here, and they, like the poems, change, just as faces change from one decade to the next, from one generation to the next.
In the end, the question reverts back to whether the book is successful, and the only truth is this: here, with the thanks of time and talent, Gervitz’ words have been placed into a serious translation, produced in a serious manner by a serious publisher. This is 46 years of someone’s life and someone’s work, and putting together such a book is a tremendous task. Is it successful? Well, this is a book put together by Gloria Gervitz, to express Gloria Gervitz, and to satisfy the artistic needs of Gloria Gervitz. In this it has fully, and unquestionably, succeeded.
November 20, 2021
I'm glad I ignored advice by one of the blurbers to read this book-length poem slowly, "like a prayer." I took a running start that carried me right to the end quickly. If I hadn't done that, I'd have been swamped by some of the earlier (dreamier?) pages. Now that I see what the good poet has done, I'm ready for another more prayerful read.
Unrelated: Not sure why the Goodreads page for this edition has a Norwegian introduction. I read Mark Schafer's translation into English, the NYRB Poetry edition as pictured.
Unrelated: Not sure why the Goodreads page for this edition has a Norwegian introduction. I read Mark Schafer's translation into English, the NYRB Poetry edition as pictured.
Read
December 3, 2021I do love a nice long poem
January 28, 2023
Pure gold.
May 24, 2024
~3.25
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews