Tekiah (1994, 2002)

Synopsis

The poems in this collection are concerned with the compatibility of contemporary consciousness and a rich, ancient liturgical tradition. Specifically, the poems explore the deep feelings of joy and regret, shame and hope associated with the Days of Awe, the Jewish High Holidays, beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and concluding with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The book's title, Tekiah, refers to the sound of the shofar, the ceremonial ram's horn that is blown to commemorate the beginning of creation. The sound also recalls the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, the destruction of the Temple, and the binding of Isaac, and anticipates as well the reunification of the Jews of the Diaspora. Finally, and perhaps most important, it serves as an entreaty to the Jewish people to perform teshuvah, to return to God.

Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In his first book, Chess asks urgent questions about the ways in which Jewish history (recent and Biblical) shapes individual life. The poetry offers moments of narrative and sudden illuminations, exploring how humans and the divine communicate. Chess's images can be startling, rich with empathy, loneliness and intimacy. But at times he allows himself unoriginal language that tends to obscure feeling. And occasionally he stops short, as if before a gate leading to further complexity. The poems can also waver confusingly among pronouns, or acquiesce to imprecise verbs; but they are capable, too, of wit and tenderness. The best work is moving and direct, as seen in Chess's final poem, "Tekiah Gedolah," a passionate account of the binding of Isaac in which the blasting call, or tekiah, of the ram's horn expresses a child's unspoken anguish and rage. Here Chess calls on himself, for those who have been silenced, to restore language.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Alan Shapiro
The overarching subject of Tekiah, Richard Chess's marvelous first book of poems, is the privileged and oppressive legacy of religious and historical experience, of memory that burdens the present even as it helps to clarify it. In a remarkable idiom that is as unpredictable as it is unpredictable as it is just. Chess brings the 'lift and shine' of lyric speech to bear upon the unredeemable disorders of contemporary life. Tekiah will amaze, challenge and console all those who seek in poetry the transfiguring articulation of our darkest problems.