Jacob's Dream

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Those of us who have read Elizabeth Brewster’s poetry with admiration
and pleasure over many years will not be unduly surprised, since her
first publication appeared just over 50 years ago, to be told in the
biographical summary that she “has turned eighty years of age.” We
may well be surprised, however, by the additional statement that she has
“converted to Judaism.” Yet certain developments in her verse over
the past few years might well have prepared us for this shift. After
all, recent volumes have been entitled Footnotes to the Book of Job and
Burning Bush.

Jacob’s Dream is divided into two parts: “Solstice and Equinox”
(which, in addition to poems evoking the seasons, ranges over a wide
range of subjects from Santiago de Compostela to Sir Philip Sidney) and
“Amidah: Daily Benedictions.” “Amidah” refers to a liturgical
prayer recited at daily services and made up of a varying number of
“blessings.” And “Blessing” is, in fact, a key word in the whole
book, occurring in six of the titles, while “Prayer” occurs in four
others. Yet the secular and the sacred interconnect. The poem entitled
“Translating Jacob’s Dream” occurs in the first part of the book,
while the opening poem in the second part is “Midsummer Morning.”
And that is as it should be.

There is nothing solemn or dogmatically religious about these poems.
They are poems of joy and celebration, the aging poet giving thanks for
the satisfactions of a long life. As always with Brewster, these are
short, quiet, unostentatious, beautifully controlled poems that enhance
ordinary experience, poems that continually recall Pope’s line,
“What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”

Readers who already know Brewster’s earlier books will need no
recommendation from me. Those who don’t should take notice. Here is a
fine poet who has pursued her art for half a century, unresponsive to
passing fashion, who has achieved a wisdom which she wears modestly—a
poet who, above all, knows that “poem,” “prayer,” and
“praise” are linked by more than alliteration. A poet whom we should
all greet with a blessing.