Synkroniciti is honored to welcome poet Jane Berger Herschlag of Connecticut with two poems exploring the relationship between audacity and surviving trauma.
“Admiration for Snowy Egrets” meditates on the deadly elegance of egrets, stalking their prey with patience and strength belying their delicate, seemingly fragile bodies. Having once struggled with an eating disorder, the poet feels a kinship with them.
“How else can I fill my hunger?/ Anemic acrobat on a trapeze, 87/ pounds at marriage, it took me decades/ to learn how to snatch elusive fish/ from muddy waters of my past.”
It is shocking to think of a beautiful animal killing and eating but every existing organism gleans its sustenance from the death of others–be they animal or plant. Survival requires the audacity to nourish ourselves at the expense of other beings. Jane calls us to reflect on this conundrum and how we might maintain equilibrium with an attitude of grace and gratitude that takes only what we need. Animals are more honest than we are.
“My Fingers Marrow-strong” is a heartrending chronicle of sexual abuse in childhood. We are drawn from the brutal horror of a father’s devastating touch to the quiet, stubborn resilience buried in the poet’s bones as she navigates the struggle between denial and sanity, which are depicted as contrasting blankets.
“He tried to suck out my marrow/ but it was unreachable// Fatigue-cold I need denial’s plush blanket/ but tug on sanity’s woof and warp/ thinned to sheer”
Jane draws a stark connection between sexual assault and genocide—acts rooted in the desire to annihilate, to crush another human being beyond repair. Yet she also shows how audacious life can be in response. We may be damaged, but as long as we live and cling to even the sheerest fabric of sanity, we are not extinguished. In that tenuous persistence lies a victory.
Read Jane’s deeply resonant and moving poetry in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jane Berger Herschlag, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, was an apparel designer, textile designer, and model home decorator. Jane got herJ B.A. in Creative Writing and Women’s Studies from Hunter College, and her M.A. in Creative Writing from CCNY, having won numerous awards.
She curated open mic readings at the West Side YMCA in NYC for seven years, and at a Fifth Avenue deli in NYC, Picnic Place; reviewed by the New York Times. Jane ran a peer workshop for ten years. She taught creative writing at NYC schools and at ESCAPE to the Arts—the Writer’s Voice at the regional YMCA of Western Connecticut. Her Docu-Poetry chapbook, Bully in The Spotlight is published by Pudding House Publications. Her full-length poetry collection and photographs, When the Mouth Can’t Speak the Body will, is published by Finishing Line Press. She is included in many university presses and anthologies.