Radiant Shards Hoda’s North End Poems By Ruth Panofsky

Radiant Shards: Hoda’s North End Poems Paperback – June 5, 2020 by Ruth Panofsky (Author)

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Inanna Publications (June 5, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 100 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1771337575
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1771337571

Reviewed by LB Sedlacek

Panofsky writes poems about Hoda, the protagonist of Adele Wiseman’s novel “Crackpot” imagining her voice.  She brings the character to life for those familiar with her or not.  From section I, Beginnings:  “But wait – / here’s Daddy / whose stories / will me back / to life’s surface and / lead me to the source / the origin / of my great becoming / a tale so epic / it implores me to listen / and concede / yes, yes, I am here.”  The book includes photographs that make it into a memoir poem, Hoda is an interesting character indeed.

About the Author

Ruth Panofsky is an award-winning poet who lives and writes in Toronto, where she teaches Canadian Literature and Culture at Ryerson University. She is the author of AT ODDS IN THE WORLD (Inanna Publications, 2009), The Force of Vocation: The Literary Career of Adele Wiseman (2006) and The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada: Making Books and Mapping Culture (2012). Her award-winning critical edition of the collected poetry of Miriam Waddington appeared in two volumes in 2014, and she edited The Spice Box: Canadian Jewish Writing (2017). Her newest work, Toronto Trailblazers: Women in Canadian Publishing, which focuses on key twentieth-century publishers, editors, and literary agents, was published in 2019. She is also an award-winning poet. She received the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for LAKE AND NAHUM: A POEM IN TWO VOICES (Inanna Publications, 2007). RADIANT SHARDS: HODA'S NORTH END POEMS, her third volume of verse, received a Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award.