City of Skypapers - Paperback

by Marcela Sulak (Author)

City of Skypapers, a 2021 National Jewish Book Award Finalist in poetry, records the con-ti-nu-ity between the per-son-al and the nation-al, the present and the his-toric. Ground-ed in the Jew-ish cal-en-dar and land-scapes of Tel Aviv, and leav-ened with self-dep-re-cat-ing humor, these poems exam-ine what it took "to get here today"--and these todays add up into this rich, max-i-mal-ist col-lec-tion. Poems engage with the Arab-Israeli con-flict, Gaza, and race in per-son-al ways. Oth-er poems doc-u-ment sin-gle moth-er-hood and quo-tid-i-an moments with clar-i-ty and pow-er. "Time ripens" in Sulak's poems "on the vines and limbs, along the laun-dry line." A full life emerges in these pages, and we are enriched by hav-ing inhab-it-ed that life.

Author Biography

Marcela Sulak's five Black Lawrence Press titles include The Fault (2024), National Jewish Book Awards finalist, City of Sky Papers (2021), lyric memoir Mouth Full of Seeds (2020), Decency (2015), and Immigrant (2010). She's co-edited the Rose-Metal Press title Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres. Sulak's translations from the Czech, French, and Hebrew have been recognized by PEN and the National Endowment for the Arts. Sulak is managing editor of The Ilanot Review, and directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, where she is Associate Professor of American Literature.