I’m looking forward to speaking at Fairmount Temple in Beachwood, Ohio on March 8, 2017 at 7:00 pm– 8:30 pm
“In this moment of societal divisiveness, we must advance substantive and respectful dialogue as a temple community. It is our collective investment in the social compact that is critical to the future of civic life here in Cleveland. We are fortunate that Fairmount Temple includes many individuals who spend every day working to bridge the gap of racial, economic, and social injustices in our midst.
On Wednesday, March 8, Sarah Marcus-Donnelly and Charles
Ellenbogen, both temple members, will join us for a teach-in, reflecting on essays they have published in the newly published A Race Anthology: Dispatches and Artifacts From a Segregated City (edited by Dan Moulthrop and RA Washington).
This discussion continues our conversations around race featured at our Yom Kippur Stern Social Action Lecture and our book group discussion of Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy. We look forward to joining together as one community in pursuit of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world.
To RSVP, please contact Cathy Kaus at 216-447-9539 or CKaus@fairmounttemple.org. Copies of the essays, which we recommend reading before the gathering, can be found here, as well as copy of Rachel Laser’s remarks from Yom Kippur, Why Atone for Racism?”
Facebook invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/232520650544299/
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I’ll be reading at The West Woods Shaker Library Branch on March 20th, 2017 in honor of Women’s History Month. More info TBA.
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Also, the poet Barton Smock wrote this beautiful review of THEY WERE BEARS:
Absence is not a magic trick. In this book, there are enterings and leavings and a loneliness that says I am home because I am here. In one wilderness, “Cleveland is one big hospital” (from No Children), in another, “The boar closes the distance” (from Damage Ready)
This book will do nothing to curb your addiction to trajectory. As for continuance, I wasn’t sure I could go on after reading the last line of the first poem. Marcus maps her land early.
You will question your body throughout. Body are you wanderer or are you deserter. Are you mouth or are you feast. Body have you devoured my eyesight. Every last bit?
Vastness is local. Ruin, a tourist. Pain a forward thinking journalist still covering the moon as made for man.
Bears are here, are moving in and out of a crowd’s exodus from a costume party for symbols. Some bears are not here, but are sick of being spirits.
I wish I could bring only what I need. But what of the other, dragged as it was for being necessary?
Marcus is a writer of both inquiry and finality. She has stones, not for, but from, the stoning. In the book’s last entry (Revival, Revival), this phrase: “Unspell me.” I was broken before I broke. This author, she looks back. This journey had a following.
Sarah Marcus 