My Father's Hands Spoke in Yiddish

My Father's Hands Spoke in Yiddish is a powerful collection. Karen Shenfeld's poems are filled with passionate sensuality, triggered by dazzling memories of people and places. There are short lyric poems that focus on a specific symbol to take on larger meanings, and narrative works in which the poet contemplates the Holocaust using the specifics of everyday, named objects. From Shenfeld's controlled intelligence comes an honest recollection of the past, imbued with an expansive hopefulness. {Michael Carrino}

Karen Shenfeld's careful, concentrated language draws the reader in. Hers is a charged, physical world where figure skates are "a shock of alpine white," and the Torah's "crowned letters dance." It is also a world marked by profound metaphysical connections where fireflies flash "coded signals of their secret selves." There is an irresistible brilliance and humour to several of the poems and Shenfeld's tributes to her red-hot Jewish mamas - Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, and Sophie Tucker - will leave the lover of poetry wishing she'd offered more. {Kenneth Sherman}