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Yerra Sugarman
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The Bag of Broken Glass Paperback – March 30, 2008

by Yerra Sugarman (Author)
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
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"Yerra Sugarman's first book Forms of Gone marked the appearance of a mature poet with an invaluable world-view, that of a daughter of Shoah survivors settled in Canada interrogating and recreating a vanishing palimpsest of experience. The Bag of Broken Glass, with a mastery of form and of the multi-vocal sequence, enlarges on the poet's project: investigates the permutations of the erotic in the quotidian and the ways the past permeates the present; examines the natural world in its intersections with memory; examines Scripture with a contemporary exile's eye on history, psychology and language. This new book establishes Yerra Sugarman as an important poet on the North American literary landscape, as a "world" poet whose concerns have no borders."--Marilyn Hacker

"Standing at prayer, mourning and grieving, preoccupied with suffering, somehow the poetry of Yerra Sugarman breaks through, functions something like a solar system--around a sun that is Beauty and constant, there moves a planet Clarity of Utterance, there are the planets History and Holocaust, and the twin planets Passion and Eye whose gravitational pulls keep it all in motion, then there is Music (a voice distantly related to a cello), and the planet Language (that like our Venus is the brightest of all), finally there is Decency, which is made of iron and has its own star. This extraordinary display in the literary heavens appears in every poem."--Stanley Moss

The prize-winning selection, a "day" from Yerra Sugarman's "Journal: Rai'ut Coma Ward, Tel Aviv-Yaffo, July 2003," begins with the question, "What to call it..." and ends with a related, apposite question: "But what happens when language can no longer bear us?" The poem articulates grief and loss by indirection, accumulating sharply etched details of the quotidian to evoke absence and silence; to evoke, in other words, the unsayable. The darkness of the confrontation and its final cri de coeur stand in paradoxical balance with a poetic language almost overcharged in its sensuous appeal.... The free-verse lines are deployed with great skill, and the lyric-elegiac tone eloquently encounters the dust storm (sand storm?) of history."--Michael Palmer, Awarding Yerra Sugarman PSA's 2007 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award
Previous page
  1. Print length
    120 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Sheep Meadow Press
  4. Publication date
    March 30, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 0.25 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1931357587
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1931357586
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Yerra Sugarman's first book Forms of Gone marked the appearance of a mature poet with an invaluable world-view, that of a daughter of Shoah survivors settled in Canada interrogating and recreating a vanishing palimpsest of experience. The Bag of Broken Glass, with a mastery of form and of the multi-vocal sequence, enlarges on the poet's project: investigates the permutations of the erotic in the quotidian and the ways the past permeates the present; examines the natural world in its intersections with memory; examines Scripture with a contemporary exile's eye on history, psychology and language. This new book establishes Yerra Sugarman as an important poet on the North American literary landscape, as a "world" poet whose concerns have no borders." --Marilyn Hacker

"Standing at prayer, mourning and grieving, preoccupied with suffering, somehow the poetry of Yerra Sugarman breaks through, functions something like a solar system--around a sun that is Beauty and constant, there moves a planet Clarity of Utterance, there are the planets History and Holocaust, and the twin planets Passion and Eye whose gravitational pulls keep it all in motion, then there is Music (a voice distantly related to a cello), and the planet Language (that like our Venus is the brightest of all), finally there is Decency, which is made of iron and has its own star. This extraordinary display in the literary heavens appears in every poem." --Stanley Moss

"The prize-winning selection, a `day' from Yerra Sugarman's `Journal: Rai'ut Coma Ward, Tel Aviv-Yaffo, July 2003,' begins with the question, `What to call it...' and ends with a related, apposite question: `But what happens / when language can no longer bear us?' The poem articulates grief and loss by indirection, accumulating sharply etched details of the quotidian to evoke absence and silence; to evoke, in other words, the unsayable. The darkness of the confrontation and its final cri de coeur stand in paradoxical balance with a poetic langauge almost overcharged in its sensuous appeal. `Light' forms the leitmotif, `light that prisms,' `lunatic light,' `light's gauze,' `light's indifferent ardor,' `Light its own architect,' and the poet's sentences are ultimately called upon to `be luminous' that is, to cast light upon both the past and the dark of the `wounded days.' The free-verse lines are deployed with great skill, and the lyric-elegaic tone eloquently encounters the dust storm (sand storm?) of history."
--Michael Palmer, Awarding Yerra Sugarman PSA's 2007 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award

Yerra Sugarman received the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for her first book, Forms of Gone; a "Discovery"/The Nation Poetry Prize; and many other honors. Born in Toronto, she lives in New York City, where she has taught creative writing at several universities. In Spring 2008, she will teach at Rutgers, and will be Writer-in-Residence at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.

About the Author

YERRA SUGARMAN received the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for her first book, Forms of Gone (also available from Sheep Meadow Press). Her poems, translations and articles have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Nation, ACM, Pleiades, and in French journals, among others. She has taught at City College (CUNY), NYU and at Pratt. Born in Toronto, she lives in New York.

YERRA SUGARMAN received the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for her first book, Forms of Gone; a "Discovery"/The Nation Poetry Prize; and many other honors. Born in Toronto, she lives in New York City, where she has taught creative writing at several universities. In Spring 2008, she will teach at Rutgers, and will be Writer-in-Residence at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sheep Meadow Press; First Edition (March 30, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 120 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1931357587
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1931357586
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.25 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 3 ratings

About the author

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Yerra Sugarman

Yerra Sugarman

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Yerra Sugarman is the author of three poetry collections: Aunt Bird, which is forthcoming from Four Way Books, The Bag of Broken Glass and Forms of Gone (both published by The Sheep Meadow Press). Her chapbook, From Her Lips like Steam was published by the Aureole Press. She has received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, among other honors. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, The Nation, AGNI, Bat City Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. Currently, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
3 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Laurel Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant, lyrical, a universal voice.......
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2008
Yerra Sugarman's work here is reminiscent of an Old Testament psalmist, giving voice to the dark peripheries and wounds of life with lyrical grace and quiet elegance. Through skillful poetic forms and simple words, she creates powerful moments in time. Whether inhabiting the ancient past, detailing a troubling presence, or looking to an unknown future, she speaks with a universal voice.

"Through the Portholes of the Eyes" expresses eloquently the grief and fear of watching her dying mother prepare for the end of life:

But I could no more unclench
my stare from her being
than untangle my fear

that in dying
she was also forgetting
my name.

In "My Bag of Broken Glass" the poet contemplates Poland of 1939 and Canada in 1978. These two excerpts from that poem reflect the stunning clarity and beauty of Sugarman's memories of fear and death in Poland, love and survival in Canada:

Beneath the blood bitter moments,
are there only blowing voids or brittle essentials?

Words fall like long hairs on her mind's floor.
Images get caught in memory's teeth.

Surgarman entwines an individual sorrow with the universal in "Journal: Rai'ut Coma Ward, Tel Aviv-Yaffo, July 2003." Her mother's youngest sister languishes there in an unconscious state:

To connect the body's pain
with the pain of the body's world
like the hand's double,
its shadow on a leaf
of paper in this coma room's caul of light --

But you don't wonder who tenders
the bitter or who measures

the weeping and the ravaged. History bears you
in its unconsummated peace
where it always stops
and you retreat
from the world not knowing

your history or yourself.

In "Sacred are the Broken" the poet memorializes the legacy of Ruth Apteker, a half-Jewish, half-German woman whose greatest accomplishments and possessions were resurrected from a dumpster:

The body can die alone on an uptown stoop,
seeking refuge from its bug-filled studio.
And the damned, duplicitous mist
will weave a pall from its once soft cloak.
You see how we're born:
solitary, dying, holy, broken.

And sacred are the broken, the inconstant,
the distracted genius, curmudgeon, refugee,
and the one who would offer an only pair of good shoes to a victim of fire.

Critics have described the poetry in this book as invaluable, extraordinary, eloquent, luminous and masterful. Such praise is understatement. The Bag of Broken Glass has my highest recommendation.
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Fran Montane
5.0 out of 5 stars The Bag of Broken Glass
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2008
I was very excited and looking forward to reading this book! In the realm of contemporary poetry, her use of language and poetic form is nothing short of brilliant. This book spoke intimately to me of grief and loss, religious questioning, holocaust and history with the tint of a suffering that I am familiar with. What was so great about this book is that she is able, through her poetry, to give meaning to the grief - with an artistry that transcends the difference of personal history for the reader. This book fosters a deep compassion for reflection. I think anyone who has experienced loss or suffering will admire this book and if they are lucky enough not to have experienced that yet in their life they will admire it for it's artistic merits. She is one of the most talented poets I've read.
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J. Reed
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and transcendent
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2008
The words "achingly beautiful" rarely ring true for me, but in the case of Yerra Sugarman's poetry, they are absolute. While her exploration is often through an autobiographical lens, what is so wonderful about Sugarman's work is how it transcends her own experiences. Love and grief are, after all, universal, and there is nothing in her work as a whole or in this collection that requires a particular cultural understanding or a particular loss in order to find one's way in.
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