House of Mourning (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781639808328)

Benjamin Shalva's gentle, intelligent voice, from the very beginning of this marvelous collection, invokes an unmitigated light within the darkness of mourning and sadness. In grief, we come to know the clasping and unclasping of the heart: the sitting low to the ground and the closing of doors that precede a coming forth again and the opening of apertures. His poems, controlled, clear, are inspired by his work as a rabbi and by such poets of melancholy as Jane Kenyon, and all the while, in the backdrop, there is what the vicissitudes of history teach us about human pain. I admire this debut deeply, which, like the burning bush in his wonderful poem by that title, reanimate and freshen each time I return to them.

-David Keplinger, author, Ice

These "tiny psalms of shameless sound" are miniature masterpieces of disciplined language and original imagery. Don't let the title prepare you for a book of lamentations; besides reflections on life and death, the book includes snapshots of social life, love, parenthood, and nature, many in the form of short, sometimes haiku-like verse. There's humor here, too - even a love poem to a jar of peanut butter.

-Raymond P. Scheindlin, author, Vulture in a Cage: Poems by Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life

Benjamin Shalva's House of Mourning is a loving book. Which is to say it is a book of bewilderment, and grief, and wonder. Shalva has looked long and hard at things most of us only glance at, if we look at all, but - in these poems, at least - he has not allowed himself to be overwhelmed by what he has seen. And so, because Shalva has not spared himself while looking, he has written honest poems, and we, his readers, have been given a gift.

-Shane McCrae, author, New and Collected Hell


Author: Benjamin Shalva
ISBN-10: 1639808329
ISBN-13: 9781639808328
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Language: English
Published: 11/24/2025
Pages: 74
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.18d