LAST GLIMPSE, poetry by Valerie Bacharach
Publication Date: August 15, 2024
Paperback, 82 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-79-0
“I have abandoned myself to grief’s lush lands.” Seldom has grief been depicted as lushly as in this elegiac debut collection from poet Valerie Bacharach, whose catalog of griefs range from the deeply personal loss of parents and a son “gone from this world too soon” to the global historic tragedies of her Jewish heritage. Her title evokes a fleeting look back at a vanishing past, but it is also a “Last Glimpse of the Future,” a surrender of possibilities, and several of her poems contain blanks that are not so much erasures as lacunae of life unfinished. “It’s hard to love this world,” she admits in her closing poem, but it’s title – “Grace Notes” – reminds us of the pleasure still to be found in “fragile white blossoms” or a “cardinal, brilliant as a lit match,” and in the end she abandons herself to that hope, also lush. “I eat my memories, store them in my blood.” They sustain her, and in reading these poems, they nourish us as well.
Praise for Valerie Bacharach & Last Glimpse
Valerie Bacharach’s debut full-length collection Last Glimpse tells us gorgeous, haunting—and vital—stories. Part elegy, part historical narrative, the collection situates Bacharach at all corners of her lineage, asking us What inheritance lives in me? In this collection, we mourn alongside the speaker—a “grief-shrouded mother of a son with opioid wings”—as we bear witness to her multigenerational lineage of Jewish trauma and diaspora. “I am her dream burrowed in my body,” says Bacharach of her ancestors. This dream—of survival, of navigating the trauma written “in our very DNA” —appears to us throughout Last Glimpse via arresting imagery and a questioning, yet intimate entanglement with the speaker’s Jewish faith. In its insistence on memory as an essential life force, one that helps us not only to survive, but to persevere, I am reminded of the yizkor, memorial books written to preserve the memory of Jews murdered during the Shoah, as I read—and re-read—this incredible debut.
—Rachel Mennies, author of The Naomi Letters & The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards
Bacharach’s lyrical narratives keen and clamor with aching that keeps recurring, revealing the poet’s generous heart. Her energetic craft-in-motion explores both sturdy and oddly fragmented forms, calling to ancestors or to home and garden-fed spirits. Twin loves: travel and ritual, brim with questions. Bacharach’s attention to a “last glimpse of the future,” canopies not only the collection’s title, but a number of poems weighing travel as both escape and trap. I appreciate the poet’s emotional forecasting and her austerity of mind at work in pre-figuring and embracing the unknown. These are poems born of history and diaspora, and cyclical losses, to be sure, but also wonder, which acts as guardian and advisor.
—Judith Vollmer, author of The Sound Boat: New and Selected Poems
About the Author
Valerie Bacharach lives in Pittsburgh and is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Workshops. She received her MFA from Carlow University in 2020. She has had two chapbooks published. Her poem “Birthday Portrait, Son” published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. Her poem “Shavli” has been nominated for Best of the Net 2023 and a Pushcart Prize by Minyan Magazine. Her poem “Deadbolt” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by RockPaperPoem.
Publication Date: August 15, 2024
Paperback, 82 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-79-0
“I have abandoned myself to grief’s lush lands.” Seldom has grief been depicted as lushly as in this elegiac debut collection from poet Valerie Bacharach, whose catalog of griefs range from the deeply personal loss of parents and a son “gone from this world too soon” to the global historic tragedies of her Jewish heritage. Her title evokes a fleeting look back at a vanishing past, but it is also a “Last Glimpse of the Future,” a surrender of possibilities, and several of her poems contain blanks that are not so much erasures as lacunae of life unfinished. “It’s hard to love this world,” she admits in her closing poem, but it’s title – “Grace Notes” – reminds us of the pleasure still to be found in “fragile white blossoms” or a “cardinal, brilliant as a lit match,” and in the end she abandons herself to that hope, also lush. “I eat my memories, store them in my blood.” They sustain her, and in reading these poems, they nourish us as well.
Praise for Valerie Bacharach & Last Glimpse
Valerie Bacharach’s debut full-length collection Last Glimpse tells us gorgeous, haunting—and vital—stories. Part elegy, part historical narrative, the collection situates Bacharach at all corners of her lineage, asking us What inheritance lives in me? In this collection, we mourn alongside the speaker—a “grief-shrouded mother of a son with opioid wings”—as we bear witness to her multigenerational lineage of Jewish trauma and diaspora. “I am her dream burrowed in my body,” says Bacharach of her ancestors. This dream—of survival, of navigating the trauma written “in our very DNA” —appears to us throughout Last Glimpse via arresting imagery and a questioning, yet intimate entanglement with the speaker’s Jewish faith. In its insistence on memory as an essential life force, one that helps us not only to survive, but to persevere, I am reminded of the yizkor, memorial books written to preserve the memory of Jews murdered during the Shoah, as I read—and re-read—this incredible debut.
—Rachel Mennies, author of The Naomi Letters & The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards
Bacharach’s lyrical narratives keen and clamor with aching that keeps recurring, revealing the poet’s generous heart. Her energetic craft-in-motion explores both sturdy and oddly fragmented forms, calling to ancestors or to home and garden-fed spirits. Twin loves: travel and ritual, brim with questions. Bacharach’s attention to a “last glimpse of the future,” canopies not only the collection’s title, but a number of poems weighing travel as both escape and trap. I appreciate the poet’s emotional forecasting and her austerity of mind at work in pre-figuring and embracing the unknown. These are poems born of history and diaspora, and cyclical losses, to be sure, but also wonder, which acts as guardian and advisor.
—Judith Vollmer, author of The Sound Boat: New and Selected Poems
About the Author
Valerie Bacharach lives in Pittsburgh and is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Workshops. She received her MFA from Carlow University in 2020. She has had two chapbooks published. Her poem “Birthday Portrait, Son” published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. Her poem “Shavli” has been nominated for Best of the Net 2023 and a Pushcart Prize by Minyan Magazine. Her poem “Deadbolt” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by RockPaperPoem.
Publication Date: August 15, 2024
Paperback, 82 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-79-0
“I have abandoned myself to grief’s lush lands.” Seldom has grief been depicted as lushly as in this elegiac debut collection from poet Valerie Bacharach, whose catalog of griefs range from the deeply personal loss of parents and a son “gone from this world too soon” to the global historic tragedies of her Jewish heritage. Her title evokes a fleeting look back at a vanishing past, but it is also a “Last Glimpse of the Future,” a surrender of possibilities, and several of her poems contain blanks that are not so much erasures as lacunae of life unfinished. “It’s hard to love this world,” she admits in her closing poem, but it’s title – “Grace Notes” – reminds us of the pleasure still to be found in “fragile white blossoms” or a “cardinal, brilliant as a lit match,” and in the end she abandons herself to that hope, also lush. “I eat my memories, store them in my blood.” They sustain her, and in reading these poems, they nourish us as well.
Praise for Valerie Bacharach & Last Glimpse
Valerie Bacharach’s debut full-length collection Last Glimpse tells us gorgeous, haunting—and vital—stories. Part elegy, part historical narrative, the collection situates Bacharach at all corners of her lineage, asking us What inheritance lives in me? In this collection, we mourn alongside the speaker—a “grief-shrouded mother of a son with opioid wings”—as we bear witness to her multigenerational lineage of Jewish trauma and diaspora. “I am her dream burrowed in my body,” says Bacharach of her ancestors. This dream—of survival, of navigating the trauma written “in our very DNA” —appears to us throughout Last Glimpse via arresting imagery and a questioning, yet intimate entanglement with the speaker’s Jewish faith. In its insistence on memory as an essential life force, one that helps us not only to survive, but to persevere, I am reminded of the yizkor, memorial books written to preserve the memory of Jews murdered during the Shoah, as I read—and re-read—this incredible debut.
—Rachel Mennies, author of The Naomi Letters & The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards
Bacharach’s lyrical narratives keen and clamor with aching that keeps recurring, revealing the poet’s generous heart. Her energetic craft-in-motion explores both sturdy and oddly fragmented forms, calling to ancestors or to home and garden-fed spirits. Twin loves: travel and ritual, brim with questions. Bacharach’s attention to a “last glimpse of the future,” canopies not only the collection’s title, but a number of poems weighing travel as both escape and trap. I appreciate the poet’s emotional forecasting and her austerity of mind at work in pre-figuring and embracing the unknown. These are poems born of history and diaspora, and cyclical losses, to be sure, but also wonder, which acts as guardian and advisor.
—Judith Vollmer, author of The Sound Boat: New and Selected Poems
About the Author
Valerie Bacharach lives in Pittsburgh and is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Workshops. She received her MFA from Carlow University in 2020. She has had two chapbooks published. Her poem “Birthday Portrait, Son” published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. Her poem “Shavli” has been nominated for Best of the Net 2023 and a Pushcart Prize by Minyan Magazine. Her poem “Deadbolt” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by RockPaperPoem.