Michael and Me by Merle Nudelman

A tribute to the persistence of time and the endurance of love through physical and spiritual worlds

Stitched together in Merle Nudelman’s new book of poetry, Michael and Me, are the “buried heartbeat of rectangles”: a memory quilt of 39 patches of a mother’s love for her son, and the son’s own legacy of love through his family (“only roots and bulbs/ remain of floral glory“). This is a tribute to the persistence of time and the endurance of love through physical and spiritual worlds (“between breath and ether”).

As the author details “the texture and timbre of years” of a family dealing with the occurrence, and then re-occurrence, of cancer, the works are rooted primarily in the spiritual plane. Nudelman searches for healing (for her son and his family, but also herself) through energies we cannot see (reiki, dreams, and a connection to ancestral strength and resilience), in order to impart power into breath and create a “space for luminosity.”

I never knew
            the nuances
            but then
                          destiny's bouquet
                                       bloomed
                                       burst
                                                    and I glimpsed
                                                    the petals.
"Revelations"

What I found particularly poignant about this collection were the nods to Wordsworth: “these unremarkable remarkable moments” that are often taken for granted but becomes the vital memories that we stitch onto our quilts as precious heirlooms. Nudelman uses the natural world’s wonder as a gateway to consider the passage and illusion of time and space (“galaxy in blooms” immediately had me thinking of “heaven in a wildflower”). Similarly, she uses the notion of people as sand dispersed — at a specific point to refer to her Jewish ancestors (“dispersed sand/ after the Temple’s/ destruction“), but also generally, as none of us know when it will be our turn to pass through the narrow neck portal of the hourglass (“Through the hourglass/ beat by beat/ particles of being pass“).

Micheal and Me is about growth, wanted and unwanted, that creates the “buried heartbeat of rectangles” of our life’s tapestries: of families, of cancer, of hope, and of peace. It’s about grief — which is love without a place to go, but Nudelman finds a home for her heart in these pages.

Merle Nudelman is a writer, educator, and a lawyer. Her first book, Borrowed Light, won the 2004 Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Michael and Me is her sixth poetry collection. Her poems have garnered prizes both in Canada and in the United States and have appeared in various Canadian and American literary journals and anthologies including “Heartwood” Tree Poem Anthology (League of Canadian Poets, 2018). Merle teaches memoir and poetry writing and gives lectures on healing and growth through expression.

Publisher: Ekstasis Editions (September 1, 2023)
Paperback 6″ x 9″ | 62 pages
ISBN: 978-1-77171-484-3

Bryn Robinson

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Bryn Robinson lives in Quispamsis, NB, although she still, and always will, consider herself a Saint Johner. She uses her BA in psychology and French, and her PhD in experimental psychology, from the University of New Brunswick, to help her support health research in the province. She prefers contemporary fiction, narrative non-fiction, graphic novels and poetry - and if they are humorous, all the better. When not reading, she's exploring the New Brunswick forests and seascapes, camera in hand.