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The Jewish Fake Book Sima Rabinowitz 1-932418-07-5 $13.00 ©2004 order this title       Sima Rabinowitz writes for the page and the stage. Her poems and creative prose have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Witness, Flyway, The Muse Strikes Back, and Bad Jobs. She is the co-author of a play that has been produced in Minnesota and in Michigan, and her children's opera, Adventure at Chichén Itzá, was performed in Minneapolis. She has received two fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, a Loft Creative Nonfiction Award, and a grant from SASE: The Write Place and The Jerome Foundation. The Jewish Fake Book is her first book.           In narrative, lyric, meditation, and prayer, these poems make up a sacred syntax that speaks in startling new ways about the material world. —Sarah Kennedy, from the foreground     Filled with poems of vibrancy, of lyrical range and richness, The Jewish Fake Book is a masterfully woven and memorable first volume. Often enchanting, always compelling in its journey from exile to home again, it serves as a testament to the arrival of a new and gifted voice to the world of poetry. In one of the poems, the poet declares that "as far as I know/there have been no/mystics in our family." There is now, and her name is Sima Rabinowitz. —Robert Hedin

The Jewish Fake Book is myth, mystery, and mysticism, personal story, the pain of history, and the secrets locked in language. Resistance to "the tyranny of exactitude…the science of the righteous," pulls the poet toward "sacred ground." These are poems to respond to with passion and with thought. —Alicia Suskin Ostriker     Sima Rabinowitz is a master at creating a poetry sustained by tension, leaps, and a rare and astounding control of language. These are honest, absorbing poems from a unique and original voice. As in her poem, "Burial Society," she takes to heart the duty of poets "…to probe/with morbid tools:/this scavenger pen,/these fresh lines,/yet bled dry." —Simon Perchik     The Jewish Fake Book is nothing less than a "slate of miracles," constantly revealing the spirituality of language in a witty, unique, and embodied voice. These poems seduce and stun with their authenticity. —Ruthann Robson