Description
Book SynopsisIt’s a very personal collection inspired by Hirshhorn’s move back to the USA after having divided his time between London and Beirut for quite a few years. Moving to a new place puts things into a new perspective and makes one aware of passing time and can lead to a form of alienation. Themes like these play a role in the first set of poems. In 1944, the Hirschhorn family emigrated from England to the USA, to an apartment in New York. The very personal poems in the 853 Riverside Drive section reflect on this event from the father’s, mother’s and son’s point of view with a lament about the sister who never made it to New York. Aspects of being in exile are being explored in the third section drawing on Hirschhorn’s roots in the Middle East and Finland. This section also features a few poems by his friend Fouad M Fouad, an exile from Aleppo, co-translated from the Arabic. The last section puts everything in a wider perspective based on what’s gone before, different spiritual experiences and memory.
Table of ContentsA House in the Woods Death in the Air A Burnt Offering Against Solitude Report From Inside a Snow Globe Earth’s Hum This Must be Heaven Afflictions Sailing With the Pleiades My Many Moons Anatomy Lesson: The Philtrum Virginia Creeper Soliloquy A Disquisition on Time Spellbound The Call For Men Who Lie Awake at Night A Train Engineer’s Last Interview A House in the Woods Dark-Time Winter Blues Finlandia Wood The Blesséd Mother 853 Riverside Drive (New York City) Migrants to 853 Riverside Drive Look, We Made It to America: My Mother at 853 Riverside Drive She Who Never Made It to 853 Riverside Drive My Mother Tries on a New Floral Housecoat at 853 Riverside Drive Me, at 853 Riverside Drive Calling Home to 853 Riverside Drive Over the Edge at 853 Riverside Drive My Father Escapes 853 Riverside Drive Our Last Meeting at 853 Riverside Drive My Father Returns to Die at 853 Riverside Drive Lost in the Maze at 853 Riverside Drive Brothers in Exile For I am a Brick From Our Balcony, Dhour Choueir, Lebanon The Young Guide at a Beirut Museum Rita, in Egypt Vilhelm Hammershøi: Interiors Untitled Deir el Qamar Memento Mori One Thousand and One Nights On Misreading the First Verse of an Ancient Hebrew Hymn Brothers in Exile Déjà Vu Excerpts from Diary of a Loss In the Beginning You & I I Dream of Him in Lightness and Dust The Tahara Lessons from a Perfect Life To Aila Maayan Noah on the Mississippi In the Beginning Letter to My Parents Long Gone from 853 Riverside Drive
