Divinity School

"The poet wants to know what happened next. After the flood subsides, when the world grew back, in the place of dials and switches, inside the constraints of earthly time where faces crack, flesh sags and fish stink. She understands that conflict is easier than kindness."—from the introduction by C.D. WrightDivinity School, winner of the prestigious Honickman First Book Award from the American Poetry Review, is a wide-ranging exploration of spirituality, sex, travel, food, holy texts, and coming of age. Poet Alicia Jo Rabins brings a searing eye for surreal beauty in everyday life with a deep knowledge of wisdom literature, and creates a modern manual for living, a fearless investigation of how we learn to live in a human body both prism and flesh.How to TravelSometimes you see the leaves as birds who have traveled all night and come to rest at dawn. Sometimes you feel the space between molecules of honey. Sometimes you are at the airport. Sometimes you are at the hospital. You find your seat an hour before sunrise and watch polar bears swim slowly underwater through the glass. Oh immigration, oh fluorescent lights, the surgeon's rubber gloves, brush-tips of death against your cheek. This country stamps your passport and hands it back forever changed.Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, composer, musician, and Torah scholar. She teaches ancient Jewish texts to children and adults and performs internationally as a violinist and singer. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Literature & Fiction

Rabins, Alicia Jo

Poetry

American Poetry Review

"The poet wants to know what happened next. After the flood subsides, when the world grew back, in the place of dials and switches, inside the constraints of earthly time where faces crack, flesh sags and fish stink. She understands that conflict is easier than kindness."—from the introduction by C.D. Wright
Divinity School, winner of the prestigious Honickman First Book Award from the American Poetry Review, is a wide-ranging exploration of spirituality, sex, travel, food, holy texts, and coming of age. Poet Alicia Jo Rabins brings a searing eye for surreal beauty in everyday life with a deep knowledge of wisdom literature, and creates a modern manual for living, a fearless investigation of how we learn to live in a human body both prism and flesh.
How to TravelSometimes you see the leaves as birds who have traveled all night and come to rest at dawn. Sometimes you feel the space between molecules of honey. Sometimes you are at the airport. Sometimes you are at the hospital. You find your seat an hour before sunrise and watch polar bears swim slowly underwater through the glass. Oh immigration, oh fluorescent lights, the surgeon's rubber gloves, brush-tips of death against your cheek. This country stamps your passport and hands it back forever changed.
Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, composer, musician, and Torah scholar. She teaches ancient Jewish texts to children and adults and performs internationally as a violinist and singer. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Poetry. Women's Studies. In Alicia Jo Rabins' second collection, FRUIT GEODE, the terrifying power of maternal love coexists with sorrow for the loss of one's younger self. In lyrical, unflinching poems, Rabins investigates the passages of pregnancy, birth, and early infancy through a constellation of ancient and modern experience: Sumerian storm demons, astronauts, herbal medicine, Neanderthal DNA, Jewish mysticism, climate change. In tracing the ritual mysteries of motherhood, FRUIT GEODE examines what it means to be transformed, to leave behind our certainties and walk into the unknown. "I regard my former life / With a distant affection, / As an astronaut / Looks through a porthole / At the small green planet / Where she used to live," writes Rabins. This is a book about what it means to live in a human body, how love changes us, and what we pass on from one generation to the next.

Fruit Geode

Augury Books

About the Author\nAlicia Jo Rabins is an award-winning performer, musician, poet, and Jewish scholar whose recent film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, is being exhibited at film festivals throughout the US, most recently at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Her writing appears in Kveller, Ecotone Magazine, Tablet Magazine, and American Poetry Review, among others.\nShe is a 2020 Literary Arts Fellow in Poetry and has fellowships from RACC, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists. Rabins graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College (Creative Writing), holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson and an MA in Jewish Women's and Gender Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary. 
Winner of the 2015 American Poetry Review/Honickman Book Prize, and finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, she is also the author of Divinity School and Fruit Geode, and creator of Girls in Trouble, an indie rock song cycle abut biblical women. She lives in Portland, Oregon.\n"A deeply relatable, comforting guide for anyone who ever feels overwhelmed by parenthood . . . does not shy away from matters like the author's postpartum depression, loneliness, and financial strain. This authenticity sets Even God Had Bad Parenting Days apart from other parenting books." 
--Leah Grisham, The Jewish Book Council\n"Heartfelt, funny, and poignant" --The Jewish Review\n"A multidimensional work of meditation and love" --Mikhal Wiener, Lilith\nNew parents get overwhelmed, regularly pushed to their limits and confused by contradictory feelings of elation and near-despair. 
To soothe the frazzled and lift their spirits, writer and Bible scholar Alicia Jo Rabins has created “Even God Had Bad Parenting Days: ancient Jewish wisdom for new parents.” Humorous, self-reflective, and comforting, Rabins' musings on both heartening and cringe-worthy biblical examples of parenting can help any caregiver see beyond the detritus of day-to-day living with young children and recapture a sense of wonder at the process of raising small humans. 
Parents do worry about their failed attempts to be perfect, and these short, personal essays can lead them to new perspectives and even to embrace a vital concept that English psychologist and pediatrician D.W. Winnicott called "the good enough parent." The supportive and inspirational writings of this gentle parenting book can help any soul embarked upon this wild, sacred work recognize the wisdom of poet Norman Fischer’s advice that “the only transcendence is fully embracing the ups and downs.” 
This collection draws on Alicia Jo Rabins’ years of experience as a writer, Bible scholar, and feminist Jewish educator, and is based on her popular series of articles on parenting for Kveller.

Even God Had Bad Parenting Days

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Behrman House

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rabins, Alicia Jo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rabins, Alicia Jo

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rabins, Alicia Jo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Divinity School

Divinity School

Fruit Geode

Even God Had Bad Parenting Days