Poet Valerie Bacharach’s ‘Last Glimpse’ makes the personal universal

Valerie Bacharach didn’t set out to write Jewish poems. But in crafting her debut full-length collection, “Last Glimpse” (Broadstone Books), Jewish themes just “naturally arose,” she told the Chronicle.

In fact, most of the 52 poems in this accessible and moving collection are infused with Judaism. Whether it is the poet’s imagining of her ancestors in the Pale of Settlement, her study of the Talmud through the practice of Daf Yomi, or her contemplation of Jewish objects holding centuries of significance, it’s clear that Bacharach feels a profound link to her heritage.

She dedicates her book to her family, “past, present and future,” and those generational ties — the sense of deep and timeless connection — resonate throughout the book.

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Bacharach began writing poetry 11 years ago as a way to process her overwhelming sorrow after her son Nathan died at the age of 26, and the landscape of grief and loss is central in many of her poems. She writes not only of the loss of her son and her parents, but of historical trauma suffered by the Jewish people, heartache that stretches across years and continents.

In “Dear Unknown Great-Grandfathers,” she imagines the pain of leaving behind wives in the old country, “their bellies full of children,” in search of a better life. In “What They Left Behind,” dedicated to her great-grandparents, Bacharach lists the things that may not have accompanied her ancestors as they emigrated to America. Each phrase conjures an image and a sentiment: “A pale yellow apron,”; “Her mother’s crocheted handkerchief”; “A bushel of potatoes”; “Shabbat candlesticks”; “A forgotten conversation.”

Bacharach’s personal grief is tenderly shared in poems such as “Every July, 30,” as she describes the ritual of lighting a yahrzeit candle for her son and remembering:

“the way you slurped pasta, chin reddened with sauce, swirled
ice cream in a lemony bowl until it turned to cold soup,
laughed with your brother about some joke I can’t remember.”

Or in “Wind Phone: Nathan,” where she speaks to her late son, her heart breaking through the simplest of words: “Here in Pittsburgh, in the house you never saw.” So much sorrow, so eloquently and succinctly shared.

Bacharach writes of another kind of loss, her father’s dementia, in “The Stuntman,” portraying the harsh reality of dwindling cognizance while writing with sensitivity of the “wonderous new life” of a mind gone rogue.

“Last Glimpse” is elegant and deeply relatable. I cried several times while reading Bacharach’s poignant words. With a simple turn of phrase, a straightforward precept, the poet conveys so much.

In “Bach Trio Sonata #6 in G Major,” an elegy to her mother, she writes: “I have abandoned myself to grief’s lush lands,” and then, finally, honestly, she says what so many of us feel:

“I wish I had been more tender with my mother.
I miss having parents. I’m too old to be an orphan.”

A member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Workshops, Bacharach received her MFA from Carlow in 2020 and previously published two chapbooks. PJC

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.