God Is a Tree: and Other Middle-Age Prayers by Esther Cohen

Esther Cohen

2023 թ. ապր · Pleasure Boat Studio: A Nonprofit Literary Press

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"A tiny, fabulous book of poems, a distinctive quiet, humorous voice, about getting older. And who isn’t getting older? Sensible and yet original, nothing sentimental or smarmy, this is great great poetry couched in a ‘who, me?’ way. Esther Cohen has a brand new fan in me. I am going to buy a zillion copies of this, the perfect gift. Takes 2 0 minutes to read, if that, yet I know it will keep me company for years and years. I’d put it between Allen Ginsberg and a book of Rumi maybe. 

They’re tiny prayers, numbered. Here’s Twenty Nine:

“The truth is I’ve had

a hard time with forgiveness.

Revenge is easier.

Last year I read four forgiveness books,

talked to a few serious Christians and Jews

even a Buddhist a Hindu a Sikh and an

agnostic. I don’t intuitively

turn the other cheek, and don’t know how.

And I’m talking about pettiness,

not wars or larger wrongs.

I’d like to learn, and thought one way might be

to say the word three times each day:

forgive

forgive

forgive

Amen" - Janet, Goodreads

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Poetry. Esther Cohen writes with humor and joy and lots of energy. You can’t help but smile when you encounter her delightful images. In her title poem, for example, you learn that she once wrote a poem and “‘God Is a Tree’ was the title. / Louis Savitsky didn’t like it./ He asked why / I had the chutzpah / to believe I knew. / A few years later, Louis’s daughter / became a Scientologist.” It is those seemingly unrelated comments, presented with a straight “face,” that startle and amuse as they challenge one’s thinking. These poems have a definite Jewish tone to them, but certainly one doesn’t need to be Jewish in order to appreciate them.

Esther Cohen (Book Doctor, Don’t Mind Me and Other Jewish Lies, BREAKFAST WITH ALLEN GINSBERG, PAINTING BROOKLYN and No Charge for Looking) lives in New York City where she is Executive Director of Bread and Roses, the national non-profit cultural program of New York’s union for health care workers. Winner of a Pure Visionary Award for a photographic project she initiated to give cameras and photography lessons to working men and women across the country, Cohen is a storyteller and humorist. For more on Esther, her books and a poem a day, esthercohen.com