Deep Calls to Deep (Many Voices Project, 136)

Poetry. Jewish Studies. Women's Studies. "DEEP CALLS TO DEEP introduces Jane Medved, a poet fully formed. One poem imagines Herod at the women's shelter. In another set at the Western Wall where prayers are offered, the speaker knows that 'God sends back his answers / —No and no and no.' Medved weaves family life with biblical narrative, the ancient desert landscape of Israel with images of a city in a contemporary war. 'Chaos is a magnet, / not a void,' she writes, in these timely, timeless poems. DEEP CALLS TO DEEP is a powerful meditation on the notion of safety. She asks how we create a sense of it for ourselves in this world that serves up violence in the name of justice or empire or victory. 'When the air raid siren blows through / Shabbat it finds me ready with clean sheets / and coffee,' writes Jane Medved of the intimate practices that ground us in turbulent times. This is a wise and important book."—Connie Voisine