The Fertile Crescent

Lynn R. Szabo is chair of the English Department at Trinity Western
University, Langley, B.C.

Acclaimed poet Karen Shenfeld sculpts her lyrics from sources ancient
and newly discovered, filtered through the rich knowledge of her
Jewish-Canadian historiography. The title of this finely orchestrated
volume plays on her own fertility as a writer and filmmaker imposed on
her experiences in and around the geographical space of civilization’s
legendary origins. Her highly literate lexicon of metaphor, allusion,
paradox, and analogy is annotated with the musicality of disrupted
syntax, enjambment, and synaesthesia found throughout the collection.
Dramatizing the narratives are Abrahamic mythology, maidens of the East,
pilgrims of the Sahara, and the poet’s own persona, in several
first-person revelations.

Shenfeld’s luxurious imagination, literal and figurative, offers a
portraiture easily embraced by the reader. “The Lamp Carpet,” as
illustration, creates an intriguing narrative tracing the art and craft
of the prayer-rug artisan for whom “each knot [is] a tiny / woolen
cell.” This carpet bears flowers which “have no scent. / Still their
colours perfume the air.” The poet beckons the reader: “Close your
eyes / and you might feel / the fattened mulberry worm / tickling across
your cheek.” In the sensualized historical moment, the poet is the
pilgrim in lands not her own yet her poetics give us passport to their
magic.

Most powerfully, the microcosmic and the panoramic extend themselves
from the poet’s vantage to the boundaries of the page, surprising us
with the details and danger of the scorpion’s nest or celebrating the
aging presence of freedom-fighter Tatamkhulu Afrika as she visits him in
San Francisco. In epilogues to the haze of hashish and rice wine, the
speaker depicts Gorapani and Tatopani, as she is led by her travelling
companion “across / the gorge” where “a full moon / ignited the
shoulder of Annapurna” and “it was as though you heard the / blue
snows shift, the absence of / forests, tiered hillsides falling away.”
The beauty and allure of Shenfeld’s highly alliterated landscapes are
convincing; the charm and poignancy of the impressive developments in
her poetic voice are equally compelling.