Tashlikh

Advance Praise

“These fiercely intelligent and achingly lonely poems braid together longing for human connection, longing for God, skepticism, and existential isolation. Like Emily Dickinson’s, the business of Hecht’s lyrics is circumference: in language as intimate as it is abstract, as tender as it is savage, these poems summon us to see the human condition – the poet’s and our own – from deep within and high above at the same time, ‘to bind our longing / into sheaves and call it prayer.’ ”
—Joy Ladin, author of National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna and Shekhinah Speaks.

“In this astonishing debut, Tikva Hecht writes, ‘I tell you// my tongue hurts from all this/ in a different language// than my longing first spoke.’ And yes, how precisely these poems forge a language from the edge of the self, through a wilderness of faith and desire. I found myself holding my breath as I read Hecht’s poems, startled by the depth of her reach and revelation, ‘as if words could imitate the rush of waves.’ Reader, this is one of the most realized and sublime debuts I have encountered—like all true art, it offers the complex and necessary gift of a world made stranger, and more alive.”
—Allison Benis White, author of Please Bury Me in This

“Tashlikh is an impossibly stunning debut, and Tikva Hecht will be read and revered not just for her luminous, patient artistry, but because these poems, in the end, stare down the human who dared walk through such doors. If Hecht is a religious poet, it’s primarily because she deepens the religion itself, her vital body and mind startling ancient rituals with honest ache and unabbreviated longing.”
—Katie Ford, author of If You Have to Go