Sh’ma, I Hear Voices by Merle Heidi Molofsky

These poems were written over many decades, and serve in some way as a memoir, reflecting my life events, concerns, feelings, experiences, and sense of wonder. Each poem stands alone, and yet, all the poems seem to weave together as a narrative, an unintended unfolding of the story of my life.

Merle Molofsky’s Sh’ma, I Hear Voices is a collection of poems that breathes into the different moments of a woman’s life from the precious peach and tan tones of youth, to the sparkling laughter of a happy old woman. And in the cracks of time, she even hints at the mysteries of the dark and hideous. Her feminine voices are tender and sweet in one moment, sensual and loving in the next, and then they move on to the dangerous and the scary. If conducting a psychoanalysis means listening like a poet, then Merle must be a very good analyst. She speaks of “breasts that jiggle and bob,” says “I want to curl myself around your beauty until your beauty is mine” and prepares the unsuspecting, “because in my old age, black-skirted and hideous, I will shock the brides.” Her poems breathe life into the senses. Her words will drop you into remembrance and discovery, and as you hear her voices, you will undoubtedly hear your own.

–Daniel S. Benveniste, PhD – author of Libido, Culture, and Consciousness: Revisiting Freud’s Totem and Taboo