"Remarkably, Topal's lyrical poems-so graceful, beautiful, and spare-manage to bear the inordinate weight of Jewish tragedy and loss."
-Yehoshua November, LA Times Book Prize finalist and author of The Concealment of Endless Light
"This small collection of poems punches way above its weight. In some manner, it provides both discrete and extended elegies. And isn't it difficult to write a Holocaust poem, now? Topal carries it off, elevates memory enveloped within image for scrutiny, as if to say: here is another angle, here is something you may not have seen before: 'streets glazed with brine, the reek of a dead wren, and cabbage.' Some of these poems function almost as still-life paintings - not the lovely fruit, or the rotting fruit, or the fruit with a skull, the 'memento mori' - not as reminders of death, but as capsules of what stays and goes - 'even the bending light/leaves, ' she writes. Topal's syntax houses a surrealist, but not one who makes no sense for a living - rather, one who finds new and cogent approaches to sense in the sentence. The questions rooted in these poems - 'what did I know of the menace and flaw' - the rhetorical gesture reminiscent of Robert Hayden's, regret tinged with frustration - both invite and indict the reader. These poems offer an homage to how our personal and communal history can be grasped and shaped by language, luxuriant and lingering, expanding the capacity of detail and imagination to capture, render, and hold."
-Patty Seyburn, author of Threshold Delivery
"With a miniaturist's eye, Carine Topal employs a cascade of revelatory images that supercharge these truly exquisite poems-poems both beautifully wrought and deeply felt. With superb craftsmanship, the poet orchestrates her language using incandescent gestures and accruing details, as she effectively memorializes her family's history, as well as the Holocaust's victims, and the plight of refugees. In some of these compelling poems, the irony of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and on the wrong side of catastrophic events, leads to human tragedies that continue to manifest themselves in those involved, as well as in their descendants. There's a mythic weight and intensity to Topal's confrontation of the heart's darkest chambers. Her voice, touched by biblical allegory, grace, and éclat, evocatively pleads: 'In the dark rift of the worried world, bring to us the last of the olive trees.' Bring us peace."
-Maurya Simon, author of La Sirena: A Novella in Verse
Topal, Carine: - Carine Topal, born and raised in NYC, holds a MA from New York University. She has lived in Jerusalem, Israel, where she worked with Palestinian merchants and was also employed by the Office of Assimilation, working with the settlement of Moroccan Jews. Since 1982, she has anthologized the poetry of special needs children, participated in the grassroots organization California Poets in the Schools, was the Poet-in-Residence for the city of Manhattan Beach and Poet-in-Education for Manhattan Beach elementary schools. Carine has had the privilege of conducting poetry workshops at the VA Hospital in Los Angeles. She has been awarded residencies in the U.S. and Russia, is the recipient of numerous poetry awards and honors, including the Robert G. Cohn Prose Poetry Award and the Briar Cliff Poetry Award, Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, and others. Her chapbook "Tattooed" won the Palettes and Quills Poetry Chapbook Contest. Topal's 5th collection, "In Order of Disappearance," was published by the Pacific Coast Poetry Series in 2017. She lives in the Southern California desert and by the sea, where she leads poetry and memoir workshops.
