philip kuhn: at maimonides table
Published February 2009
Paperback, 148pp, 9x6ins, £9.95 / $17
ISBN 9781848640200
at maimonides table is constructed out of a complex series of unstable texts woven through four inter-locking books. Although there is no easily defined path through this work there is perhaps a half-remembered clew, in book two, which takes as its starting point the well known Talmudic story of the four who entered the "garden"—a parable which can also be read for the dangers confronting those who seek PaRaDiSe. Here is an exploration of an im/possible ethics of messianic faith promising earthly redemption through those four exegetical portals of Talmudic reading. But such messianic longing also sits uneasily when cast in the shadows of a history steeped in so much pain & suffering.
Whilst this long book-length poem appears to confront specifically Jewish themes it can also be read and thought-through in non-denominational ways, not least because at its core lie questions concerning how we (individually and collectively) might still learn to become ourselves in peaceful relationship with others.
Download a sampler PDF of work from this book.
"It is somehow I think a very considerable piece . . . full of powerful resonances out of the sounds and rhythms, and abstract qualities of the actual words, that takes on a life above the often difficult intellectual matter [. . .] I think it is a very considerable piece of poetry, and not like anything else I know." — Fred Beake
Reda a review at Stride magazine here.
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