Poetry
A chapbook of poems counting and recounting days in a life, ranging from yearning, elegy and political outrage to passion, devotion, and gratitude. (2023)
An extended homage and elegy for a mother lost to Alzheimer’s Disease, combining formal precision with plain speech, and interwoven with translations from Spanish and French. (2017)
Practice takes as its starting point the Jewish practice of studying weekly portions of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, in an annual cycle. The poems meditate on faith, doubt, family ties, love and loss, and the age-old roots of modern-day war. (2008)
In a series of linked poems, a gay son at his father’s deathbed uncovers his family’s past and his own passage from childhood to raising a son. (1999)
A groundbreaking collaboration of three Bay Area poets: with Forrest Hamer and Molly Fisk. (1998)
A collection anchored by long poems on love in the time of AIDS, the evolutionary stubbornness of quaking aspens, an embattled neighborhood of Boston, and a Mexican town on the verge of popular revolt. (1999)
Recordings
Reading from Counting and Central American Book of the Dead, April 26, 2023 (Running time: 54:11)
Recordings of 18 poems, with text, at Voetica
A reading at Lunch Poems, a noontime Poetry Reading Series at the University of California, Berkeley, February 4, 2010, introduced by Robert Hass (Running time: 39:43)
“(election elegy)” at Tin House
“Sabbath” and “She Waits” at Image
“Counting” and “Elsewhere: A Faith story, for Grace Paley” in Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture“Practice” and “First evening prayer” at Sixteen Rivers Press
“Before words,” translated into Spanish by poet Jorge Esquinca, in Letras Libres (Mexico)
“After Du Fu: Spring Vista” and “Jacob’s Ladder” at Verse Daily
“The Portal” and “First Evening Prayer” in Writing Contemporary Midrash from Yetzirah: a Hearth for Jewish Poetry June 2023