Jenny Asse Chayo

Reading the Infinite Jenny Asse Chayo

In this splendid poetry collection, Reading the Infinite, the Mexican Jewish poet Jenny Asse Chayo meditates on the relationships among God, man and the written word. From ever-changing vantage points: this poetry is focused on the acts of reading and writing about the Jewish Bible; God writes; Man reads what God has written. Man writes; and here, God reads what Man has written. The eternal themes of Jewish existence are reconfigured through Jenny Asse Chayo's verse. She ponders the nature of God, faith, light and darkness, the wandering in the wilderness, exile, life in the Diaspora, return and redemption. In some poems, well-known stories from Genesis are reworked and become like Midrashim or biblical interpretations in the style of the Talmudists, but always with a modern twist. This is a book about reading and writing about the divine; the reader, whether religious or not, is drawn in, feeling the need to meditate on or argue with a premise, a line or even the use of an individual word. Reading the Infinite promotes a deeper spiritually among the devout of any religion and even provokes those who usually don't think about these topics. Many poems here should be read as prayers, be they by an individual or in a synagogue service. Some would not be out of place in a church or a mosque. The English translations are by Stephen A. Sadow and J. Kates. The poetry, in the original Spanish.is also included