the only poetry I've read this National Poetry Month

[hermionesviolin]

A few weeks ago, Ewa Chrusciel gave a lunchtime talk I wasn't able to attend, but I was intrigued by the blurb:

Ewa Chrusciel’s writing revolves around the issues of dislocation, immigration, exile, and cross-cultural desire. Her migratory poems and narratives are distinctly errant. They're haunted by a childhood lived under a Communist regime, by the austerity of Eastern block politics, and by the possibility of discovering a fleeting language in whose very excesses are carried the seeds of illicit revelation, spiritual transformation and ethnic insight. In her newest book, Of Annunciations, Chrusciel maps the biblical event of annunciation onto the current migration crises. Her book investigates the question, "What does it mean to say “yes” to a stranger?" Through prayer, lament, and lullaby, Chrusciel attempts to give voice to the voiceless and find healing in what seems to be an insurmountable rift of dislocation.

I got a copy of Of Annunciations from the library, and I didn't love the book like I'd hoped to, but it was worth reading for the line "We have the poor with us, but we climb over them through the abstractions to our gods." (from “Guardian Angel of Offering”)

Guardian Angel of Offering
-Ewa Chrusciel

We want God. Instead we have the poor, gang rapes, prostitution in the camps. You have been told that most of them are young, strong, single men. Ten thousand unaccompanied children had gone missing within Europe in 2016. The Pope says: “Migrants are not a danger---they are in danger.” You have been told these men cut or burn the skin of their fingers not to be traced. There are children, too, without hands to beg or pray. They are the invisible in these lines. They sit on an invisible stretcher and beat with their wings. They whimper. We want to adopt them, but they are uncatchable. Only the dybbuks remain. They borrow us as a vessel to get to the shore. We have the poor with us, but we climb over them through the abstractions to our gods.

I was also really into the

Afterword on Dybbuk and Annunciation
-Ewa Chrusciel

In Jewish mysticism and folklore, a dybbuk is the displaced soul of a dead person. It is popularly believed to be a “clinging spirit”---a disturbed soul that possesses us. Such a spirit that seeks revenge or justice is juxtaposed in Jewish Kabbalah with an ibbur, a benevolent, temporary, and at times voluntary possession. While dybbuks possess, ibburs, in a sense, bless.

While the living ones can sometimes give permission for an ibbur to inhabit them or spiritually impregnate them (the meaning of the word ibbur), dybbuks enter living persons without permission. Without a proper burial, the soul is compelled to go astray and manifests itself as a dybbuk.

My book deliberately complicates the binary between dybbuk and ibbur. One of the questions I pose is: “What becomes of the souls of drowned refugees who do not have a proper burial?” While using the word dybbuk, I do not intend, however, to present them as malicious and vengeful souls. Instead, I want to redefine and rehabilitate dybbuk by merging its characteristics with ibbur (whose name I never mention in the book, to eschew the binary). Dybbuk in this book yearns to exist until its conflict is resolved and therefore it sneaks into another body in order to fulfill its mission.

Sometimes, it simply enters a body because it is lost. It fills the host’s body and soul with pining, misery, or, rage and aggression depending on its intent. Needless to say, dybbuks are unpredictable and can cause havoc and torment, but can also lead to restitution. The breaking of the boundary between dybbuk and ibbur has been performed before. Just to give you more of the idea, in Musical Variations on Jewish Thought, Revault D’Allonnes writes:

“[W]hat is intolerable to Jewish thought is the idea that a being can die before fulfilling his destiny; the dybbuk is the spirit of one who has died ‘prematurely,’ and takes possession of a living person in order to try, as it were, to conclude his role, to round out his existence. It is not a ghost seeking vengeance or asserting its rights. It is a person making himself complete, fulfilling himself, wiping out the error or horror of early death. A phantom is hostile, ill-disposed, frightening. The dybbuk is good, it returns in order to do good; if the community wants to get rid of it . . . that is because it disturbs the social order. But, in doing so, it carries out the divine order. In this sense, which is the sense of truth, the dybbuk is an object of love. Love which is a scandal and disgrace to partisans of order but certainty and happiness to those on the side of justice...”

Annunciation in this book extrapolates from the religious event, described in the New Testament by Luke, in which Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will become the Mother of God. Mary responds to the visitor: “Be It Done According to Thy Word.” The Archangel represents the other, a stranger in whom Mary trusts. I attempt to map the biblical event onto the migration cries of this current historical moment, in which settlers and volunteers (as I call them in the book) encounter the strangers, refugees, migrants. My intention was to also symbolize the term further, as well as stretch its connotations. Annunciation becomes a symbol of the “yes” that we utter in front of reality, particularly confronted with the exiles, strangers---in other words, the other.

On another level, there are also Archangels in the book that appear to the migrants, encouraging them to flee the danger. The book meditates on these various “yeses”. It quivers on the brink between openness to the other and the terror the other brings out in us. What does it mean to say “yes” to a stranger? What implications, threats, blessings and responsibilities do “yes” carry? Can we say yes to a dislocated soul in order to become more fully who we were meant to be?