A Speaker is a Wilderness: Poems on the Sacred Path from Broken to Whole

By Anna Goodman Herrick

Weaves Jewish sacred texts, mysticism, human rights, and a modern voice of radical love, taking readers on a path of healing from brokenness to wholeness. 

This poetry addresses the interconnection of individual, communal, and global trauma, towards collective liberation. In Hebrew, the words for wilderness, speaker, and speaks are spelled the same and share the same root letters. Goodman Herrick’s title, from a poem in the collection, references the Torah’s BaMidbar (in the wilderness or desert) and her ancestor’s ritual practice of elevating etymology, roots, and folk word associations as spiritual meditation. The author returns to her roots and original wholeness through reconnecting language: “Wilderness speaks/ A speaker is a wilderness.”

Goodman Herrick survived sexual assault in her teens by a classmate, and left home at 14. The grandchild of an Auschwitz survivor, she’s been a New York City club kid, MTV writer-producer, a peacemaker around the world, nun at a Vedanta convent, and student of Chassidic rabbis. This expansiveness lives in her poems. The book invites readers to reconsider prayer and blessing as an ongoing, fluid, language, holding space for the reverent and irreverent as prophetic. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9781958972380

Anna Goodman Herrick

Anna Goodman Herrick works at the intersection of spirituality, sacred words, and human rights. She is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist. Anna has performed her poetry across the U.S., including at the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series, presenting “contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s own revolutionary poetic voice.” She has performed her poetry at the El Paso border for Artist Uprising with V (formerly Eve Ensler), Bloomsday on Broadway and Radio Bloomsday, and at the Theopoetics Conference. Her recent poetry is included in Rattle, The Ekphrastic Review, Hevria Magazine, and Ritualwell. She has created work for television and branded content for Sony, ABC Family, Oprah Winfrey Network, and MTV and shared her work at the Library of Congress, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and in film, stage, museums and galleries nationwide. For more information visit: annagoodmanherrick.com and Instagram @annagoodmanherrick.

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A Speaker is a Wilderness: Poems on the Sacred Path from Broken to Whole Copyright © 2024 by Anna Goodman Herrick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the consent of the publisher except in critical articles or reviews. Contact the publisher for information.

eBook ISBN 978-1-958972-38-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Herrick, Anna Goodman, author.

Title: A speaker is a wilderness : poems on the sacred path from broken to whole / Anna Goodman Herrick.

Description: Rhinebeck, New York : Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2024.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023045142 (print) | LCCN 2023045143 (ebook) | ISBN 9781958972373 (paperback) | ISBN 9781958972380 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3608.E7737 S64 2024 (print) | LCC PS3608.E7737 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6--dc23/eng/20240111

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023045142

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023045143

Book and cover design by Colin Rolfe

Monkfish Book Publishing Company

22 East Market Street, Suite 304

Rhinebeck, New York 12572

[phone]

monkfishpublishing.com

In memory of

צפורה מלכה בת פנינה ז״ל

Tzipporah Malka, Z"L

.ב״ה

HOW TO BLESS YOURSELF

If you are waiting for a spiritual leader to tell you,

write what you need to hear

and read it back to yourself and call it blessing.

Call the act of doing this a blessing.

Call yourself a blessing.

CONTENTS

HOW TO BLESS YOURSELF

PRAYER FOR RAIN

TENDING SEGULAH

DIASPORA PRAYER OF THE REFUGEE’S GRANDCHILD

BOTTLENECKED

TENDER AND WILD,

THEOPRAXIS OF A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL IN THE SUBURBS

ROUGH BARK

HYMN TO BLOODLETTING, SACRIFICE OF BECOMING

CALL ME BY MY HEALING NAME

FOR A MOMENT

THE OFFERING

LOVE LETTER TO MY WORRIES FROM INSIDE THIS BODY

BAMIDBAR

THE POETRY CRITIC SAYS DON’T WRITE ABOUT THE MOON

GENIZAH

FOR RICKY’S NYC, WHO LOVED ME WHEN

BUT WHAT IF GENERATIONAL TRAUMA *IS* GENERATIONAL WISDOM

MY NAME

DIASPORA BLESSING FOR MULTIPLE NEW YEARS

TIKKUN ḤATZOT

THE ROMANIAN JEW FLEES TO THE U.S. FOR A BETTER LIFE BUT ALL HER GRANDDAUGHTER DREAMS OF IS WAILING

LAMENTATIONS

[if your heart is broken let it keep breaking]

ANCESTORS

ON THE LAST DAY OF PASSOVER

THE MERCY SEAT

AFTER THE ROBBERY

SETTLING UP

THE WHOLE STORY

CONTROL

SWIM

A HOWLING WILDERNESS

SHE’ELAT ḤALOM

ITINERANT

TEHILLAH

RECKONING

EIGHT PHASES OF RECREATING THE WORLD

JUST THIS

WHEN THEY SEE ME COMING,

AFTER SHOCK

WALLPAPER FROM THE WALLS OF THE HEALING ROOM

THE FATES

THE SHAPE OF OURSELVES

B’REISHIT BEDTIME STORY

BLESSING FOR DIASPORA AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

TKHINE

TAKING IN VAIN CAN ALSO BE TRANSLATED AS BEARING EMPTINESS

HOW TO HEAL AND WRITE AT THE SAME TIME

HOPE

SEGULAH FOR THE AFTERMATH

IN THE DROUGHT

SHELTER PUP

REPAIRING MIDNIGHT

WONDER

GLOSSARY

ADDITIONAL NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PRAYER FOR RAIN

A human being is in the likeness of a small world.

— Ibn Ezra (circa 11th – 12th century c.e.)

Tell me what a world