Zilka Joseph

Sparrows and Dust Zilka Joseph

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Jewish Studies. Is this the bird way? Where is home? What is the fate of wanderers? Have we all been elsewhere? Will truths be revealed to us in the end? In this finely tuned chapbook, the poet uses free verse and form to sing her stories, her history, her geography, her experience as an immigrant who finds rest after loss and upheaval with imagination and passion. With deft use of imagery, language and the senses, she travels and shape-shifts. She weaves in science, mysticism, imagination and myth. We fly from India to Michigan and back, from this world to other in-between states where memory, death, loss, the present, the search for home and the self all sing through several voices, and become a miniature symphony. As Attar tells us through his bird characters in his allegorical rendering of Sufism--the way is long so we must persevere to find the truth. We are but water mixed with dust. The bird-soul can only rest briefly, then it must move on.