Yehoshua Novem­ber is a poet of pro­fun­di­ty and humor, of love with­out sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, and of joy with play­ful­ness and inten­tion­al­i­ty. His third col­lec­tion, The Con­ceal­ment of End­less Light, fol­lows Two Worlds Exist, which was a final­ist for the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award. The book expounds with grace and ele­gance some of November’s cen­tral artis­tic con­cerns: the nature of the soul, the con­nec­tions between the mun­dane activ­i­ties of life and the spir­it, and the mean­ing­ful jux­ta­po­si­tions that come with liv­ing with­in the Hasidic tra­di­tion in the Unit­ed States today. 

“Notes on the Soul” serves as a poet­ic fron­tispiece for the col­lec­tion. In it, Novem­ber con­sid­ers the nature of the soul through three sce­nar­ios: a work­place where some­one is ​“descend­ing / the stairs to the sup­ply room / for a paper­clip,” a class­room with a ​“blue-haired stu­dent,” and, most mov­ing­ly, a prison court­yard. Here, Novem­ber is keen­ly attuned to the world and the many mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences in it. He is able to see the human­i­ty in all peo­ple and dis­cern the soul — and often the spir­it of the divine — in the world today.

In ​“Hear­ing Roy Orbi­son in a Mik­vah in Salem, MA,” Novem­ber demon­strates his pro­fi­cien­cy at unit­ing aspects of the sec­u­lar world, like lyrics from Orbi­son, with Jew­ish rit­u­als and their spir­i­tu­al mean­ings. Novem­ber tells readers:

To sub­merge beneath the water,

the mys­tics add,

is to return to the Divine womb

the way the soul returns to the Heav­ens each night

as the body dozes.

In this poem, Novem­ber mobi­lizes an array of facts about Orbi­son and ulti­mate­ly reach­es a rev­e­la­to­ry con­clu­sion. In the process, he show­cas­es his for­mi­da­ble gifts with lan­guage, sound, and meaning.

Part of November’s ambi­tious project is to achieve ​“a third per­spec­tive, / the lens that fus­es oppo­sites— / like a mid­point between two walls.” Novem­ber rewards his read­ers with greater knowl­edge about Hasidism and its poten­tial for engage­ment in the world. One should not reduce November’s work, how­ev­er, to either a guide to Hasidism or a token of Hasidic poet­ry today. His work and vision are much greater than these easy distillations. 

November’s poems about his wife and fam­i­ly strike that del­i­cate bal­ance between the par­tic­u­lar and the uni­ver­sal — a bal­ance that the best mod­ern poet­ry achieves. At the end of the mov­ing poem ​“Forty Years,” Novem­ber describes a sense of order and sym­me­try in the world:

Forty years bisect­ed evenly:

Twen­ty with you, twen­ty before you.

And five souls pulled down into bodies.

The final poem of The Con­ceal­ment of End­less Light, ​“Notes on Mar­riage,” draws on mys­ti­cal work by Rab­bi Eliyahu de Vidas. Novem­ber may engage with intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tions that are unfa­mil­iar to some read­ers, but his por­tray­al of inti­mate rela­tion­ships is bound to res­onate with all. Novem­ber speaks for those who know the ten­der­ness and frailty of the world and the dreams and con­cerns of being human. Ulti­mate­ly, his poems expose what is con­cealed, and let it rev­el in the light.