In Jewish mysticism, the sefirot are the ten attributes of God. Keter, or “crown,” which is at the topmost part of the diagram, represents the deity. Many scholars also refer to it as ayin, or “nothingness” — a holy state, because God can never be known. In fact, all names for God are inadequate except for ein sof, which means “without end.” This idea of nothingness is key to Eden Pearlstein’s new book of poetry, Nothing Is for Everyone.
We catch the first glimpse of ayin in the poem “Eight Days After Eternity”:
welcome to the
garden of paradox
the tunnel
at the end
of the light
trust yourself
you are an
ancestor
In this poem, Pearlstein suggests that we are all descendants of a “garden of paradox.” Unlike the Garden of Eden, the garden of paradox is a different world. It’s our original holy place, our nothingness, and also our final destination.
The notion that God is unknowable comes up frequently in Pearlstein’s collection. His language often reads like a Zen koan, which is appropriate, given his subject matter. The main point of a koan is to see one’s true nature, using words that may at first seem puzzling to describe a simple idea. The koan is successful when it achieves a level of transparency. The poem “What Philosophy Feels Like” does just that:
All stars sing the
Secret name in silence while we
Read ourselves to sleep
As we go through our lives, we can try to know God, but that is about all we can do. The journey is a random one, which is part of the beauty of being alive.
Pearlstein regularly refers to the Zohar, the key text of Jewish mysticism. The work is a midrash, filled with stories that are both challenging and poetic. They are often rife with paradox, to make sure we grasp the limits of rational discourse — and language itself. Pearlstein refers to such limits in several of his poems. In “Stick Figures of Speech,” he suggests that we mold language to communicate our feelings by using cliches. The poem begins, “This whole thing rubs me the wrong way/They’re just stroking your ego.”
At its best, Pearlstein’s poetry achieves the irony and beauty of the Zohar. In the poem “Jungian Slips,” he tells us, “the text/strikes back/to interpret/the reader.” Readers will feel the subtle, surprising strike of Pearlstein’s words.
Stewart Florsheim’s poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. He was the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children of Holocaust survivors (Wayne State University Press, 1989). He wrote the poetry chapbook, The Girl Eating Oysters (2River, 2004). In 2005, Stewart won the Blue Light Book Award for The Short Fall From Grace (Blue Light Press, 2006). His collection, A Split Second of Light, was published by Blue Light Press in 2011 and received an Honorable Mention in the San Francisco Book Festival, honoring the best books published in the Spring of 2011. Stewart’s new collection, Amusing the Angels, won the Blue Light Book Award in 2022.
