Tag Archives: Norman Finkelstein

Passover Originated in Poetic Vision

In this Passover poem, Harvey Shapiro traces the movement from direct encounter with God to the Passover story.

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Gnosticism’s Flight from Earth

Spiritual Sunday I have found myself exploring Gnosticism thanks to a marvelous poetry collection by my best friend from graduate school, Norman Finkelstein (the poet, not the political scientist). Norman has been included in a group of poets labeled “the New Gnostics,” which helps me make sense of From the Files of the Immanent Foundation. […]

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Music Only Poets Can Hear

Thursday As I’m currently traveling, I’m reposting an essay I wrote seven years ago about a poem by Xavier University’s Norman Finkelstein, whom we dined with last night. Norman was my best friend in graduate school and this may be my favorite of his poems, perhaps because I too am in love with Kenneth Graham’s […]

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The Bloody Flesh Our Only Food

I share a Good Friday poem by T. S. Eliot and a Passover poem by Norman Finkelstein.

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Childhood, Space of Terror & Enchantment

Norman Finkelstein’s wondrous poem “Children’s Realm” (in “The Ratio of Reason to Magic”) examines child’s play spaces and says that the poet also needs play spaces within.

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A Poem in Praise of Libraries

In his new collection of poems, Norman Finkelstein has one of the best poems I have encountered about libraries. The poem captures the paradoxical nature of libraries, how they both preserve the past but look forward to the future.

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Death & Miracles & Stars without Number

In Norman Finkelstein’s account of the Passover, death and miracles are bound up together. It is an uneasy combination, calling upon us to look at our own complicity in the world’s evils.

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Passover: Blood on the Door Posts

Norman Finkelstein’s powerful poem reflects on the mixed history commemorated by the Passover seder. The event that marked the beginning of the Israelites journey home was also a night of death.

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Haunted by the Absent Music

“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” episode in “Wind in the Willows” is a powerful expression of pantheism.

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