As a Woman, Being Reborn
Books
By Jake Marmer
Published February 23, 2011, issue of March 04, 2011.
http://www.forward.com/articles/135619/ (http://www.forward.com/articles/135619/)
Coming To Life
By Joy Ladin
Sheep Meadow Press, 102 pages, $15.95
Medieval kabbalists wrote obsessively about language powers that brought the world into existence. Joy — previously known as Jay — Ladin is a contemporary poet whose words are also creating a world. In her case, though, the world in question is Joy's own: living as an openly transgender person — spiritual seeker, sexual being, father of two and Jew.
In her new collection, "Coming to Life," poetry becomes not merely a means of self-expression or artful contemplation, but an actual necessity. Writing means survival in a parallel universe that does not yet exist but is slowly — and often painfully — coming into existence like an unraveling poem.