Poems for Passover Poetry Salon! -- Part 1

Laura Cesarco Eglin will join us this Sunday 4/28 at 12 EST on Zoom for our salon, along with poet Jenny Barber. Here's a selection of Eglin's poems, so you can be ready!

What is it like to write in more than one language? This is the question that runs through my mind when I read Laura Cesarco Eglin’s work. Eglin, who goes by Lau, is from Uruguay, and has published three poetry collections in Spanish. Recently, she has published three poetry chapbooks in English. Time/ Tiempo, published in 2022 by Spoonfuls Press, in a lovely, striking, handmade edition, is a “meditation on time like no other,” according to poet José Angel Araguz.

The subtitle is “the idea of breath,” and all the poems here are connected through the author’s breath—through moments of time now gone. I would also say that place and space matters here, whether it’s a tangible location like Lau’s native Uruguay or a more ephemeral space, “the quiet as big as the space of one morning.”

I recommend reading this first poem with a cup of tea—which many of us need after the rush of preparing for Passover! It’s about the meaning of a pause.

Sticking with the theme of slowing down—and being present—which is so hard these days, with the endless cycle of terrible news and fear, here is a poem that is a kind of breath. It’s called “Being Present,” and it feels right for the Haggadah, for any ancient text, or any important encounter with another person. And of course, our breath indicates that we are there, present, in time, or in tiempo.

Here are two more poems, both from Time/ Tiempo. This poem reminded me that Eglin is a fully bilingual poet, and it also made me wonder what “knowing” a language really means.

Reading the Haggadah, I always notice how much I don’t know. Sure, I read Hebrew, but there is still so much mystery, so much that is out of reach for all of us non-ancient readers, centuries removed from Egypt and the exodus.

And finally, a poem on family and fate. What do we control, anyway?

Who hasn’t thought that during this year like no other? Here is “A Reading,” where Eglin gives us a glimpse of her Yiddish-speaking grandparents.

I look forward to talking about these poems with you around a table on Sunday. The salons are for paid subscribers of the newsletter as thanks for your support! There is still time to join—I will email Zoom information to new paid subscribers by 11:00 EST on Sunday.

For more on Lau Cesarco Eglin, please check out a previous edition of the newsletter here, on her poems in Spanish, translated into English by the team of Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe: Poetry of Survival & Light - by Aviya Kushner (substack.com)

Shabbat shalom, and chag sameach!

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