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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
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      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
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      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
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      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
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  • Issue #25 Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Art Spring 2023 >
      • David Carter Spring 2023
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      • Esther Yeon Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Poetry Spring 2023 >
      • Emma Bolden Spring 2023
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      • M. Cynthia Cheung Spring 2023
      • Flower Conroy Spring 2023
      • Jill Crammond Spring 2023
      • Sandra Crouch Spring 2023
      • Satya Dash Spring 2023
      • Rita Feinstein Spring 2023
      • Dan Fliegel Spring 2023
      • Lisa Higgs ​Spring 2023
      • Dennis Hinrichsen ​Spring 2023
      • Mara Jebsen ​Spring 2023
      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
      • Susanna Lang ​Spring 2023
      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
      • Matthew Murrey Spring 2023
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
      • Wesley Sexton ​Spring 2023
      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
      • Sara Sowers-Wills ​Spring 2023
      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
      • Elinor Ann Walker Spring 2023
      • Andrew Wells Spring 2023
      • Erin Wilson Spring 2023
      • Marina Hope Wilson ​Spring 2023
      • David Wojciechowski Spring 2023
      • Jules Wood Spring 2023
      • Ellen Zhang Spring 2023
      • BJ Zhou Spring 2023
      • Jane Zwart Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
      • Eleonora Balsano Spring 2023
      • Callie S. Blackstone Spring 2023
      • Daniel Deisinger Spring 2023
      • CL Glanzing Spring 2023
      • Janine Kovac Spring 2023
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      • Richie Zaborowske Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
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      • Amanda Roth Spring 2023
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Book Review: Eve and All the Wrong Men by Aviya Kushner

Eve and All the Wrong Men
Aviya Kushner
Dancing Girl Press
2019
$7


Aviya Kushner​ grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of ​The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible ​(Spiegel & Grau / Penguin Random House), which was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Finalist, and one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Religion Stories of 2015. She is ​The Forward's​ language columnist and a former poetry columnist for BarnesandNoble.com; ​she has received a Howard Foundation Fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council grant, and a Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Fellowship, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry. 



Review





















A Review of Aviya Kushner's Eve and All the Wrong Men

Aviya Kushner’s ardently feminist Eve and All the Wrong Men is a thematically linked series of poems that examine the insides of femininity, urging us to “crawl into a refrigerator” with modern Eve—unafraid of the darkness or chill—to digest the bounty it houses: “bloody desire, pain, rebellion,” and to feel the containment it represents. Kushner’s poems are an invitation to “the story of how Eve became Eve” in biblical tradition; they are offered like “jazz tickets” and impossible to refuse, because who can imagine “a world where jazz tickets / go unsold, or worse, unclaimed.”
 
Kushner creates a space where one goes to meet the self to learn about desire and loneliness on a serpentine path of relationships “walking in, / and also, walking out.” In the first of poems titled “Men,” the poet offers us hope that goes beyond Postmodern, Stevensian vision of never-ending torment of desire. Kushner allows the possibility that the path of wanting and “becoming” might eventually turn into “being”–lucent and free–at the end of desire, where one can say:  
​…, I can just be, here I am,
​In my fur-trimmed hat, being.
​As the poems weave on, one begins to appreciate Kushner’s uncanny ability to capture the complexity of woman-man relationship in one small rectangle of a chapbook. The poet begins with the portrait of Eve that is imaginative yet frank, at once free and shaft-sharp in its clarity. As the reader follows a woman through the series of failed and painful relationships with “all the wrong men:” God, Adams, Davids, ex-boyfriends, “men in my life / but not in my life,” men sleeping in beds of other women, men talking to other women, men writing about women, in the Bible and in poetry—Kushner fulfills her initial emphatic message:
​But beware,
she is less predictable than you think, God.
 
You have no idea what happens
when you make one creature out of another. (“The Feminine”)
This creature is scarred from birth; the first of her kind and, yet, always the second; a model to all who are “born woman”—the heirs of her “path.” Created only to be a companion but so often abandoned and unwanted, she finds herself in conflict with the God-given purpose .
 
Loneliness is the binding ingredient of the poems formed with the elegance of Michelangelo’s David—stripped of adornment, focused on the perfection of each line and each tercet, each structural gesture a masterful representation of the author’s passion for her craft. The passion is so contagious that I keep repeating after her the first of the “Realisations:”
If it were possible to eat a poem,
and pay a mortgage with it, I would.
​It is with such passion that Kushner offers the second realization, even more compelling, as it turns the previous desolation to something manageable:
​How I love little breakfasts
alone, out and about, around the bend
 
of my happiness
there is more happiness--
​Loneliness becomes domesticated, and—paradoxically—shareable. In her capacity to give rather than take, Kushner admits that loneliness is not a uniquely feminine problem. In “The Nameless Neighbor,” the female speaker “observe[s] how alone / he is” and empathizes with him, “the traveler” like herself, looking for a way back to Eden.
 
Kushner’s work does not attempt to define woman or place her before all creation, but joins the conversation on femininity that dates back to Genesis. On the one hand, her poems acknowledge “her wails [that] are wordless” yet echo throughout centuries. On the other hand, she celebrates her capacity to be happy. Although the story of Eve permeates the poems, at the center of the book, literally and figuratively, there is Venus, a goddess—implicit and explicit—iridescent in the lines of two side by side poems. Whether in the body of “the lovely eighty-something woman with vintage glasses” or in the ideal of Italian Renaissance, Venus embraces the winter chill and the waves rushing on her: “I am who I am, like the sea is the sea.” Whether the journey is a trudge to the supermarket in a blizzard or a voyage to Florence, Italy, the poems ask us “to stop and listen” and “to hear what you know. Again.” Kushner dazzles with skillful weaving of artistic, architectural, literary, and pop cultural threads that come together as a warm shawl against the chill of a lonely day, encouraging us to “go out. Again.” Because a woman is at once Eve, and Venus, and Layla, a river and a bridge, and so much more; fearless, beautiful, and resilient—she has what it takes
--
​and when Marie comes to borrow a cup of milk I’ll say
sure, dear, take whatever you need.
I have everything I could possibly want. (“Imagining the Thoughts…”)
​Against Western tradition that sees feminine as fallen, whether she be a mother or childfree, a wife or a “toothless hooker,” a girl or a “lovely older woman” in a “fur-trimmed hat,” a woman stands up lifted by Kushner’s unapologetic but infinitely compassionate poems. The content of this chapbook is well worth rereading—truly an aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual treat.

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Kasia Wolny is a senior at Lewis University majoring in English Literature with creative writing minor. She is the fiction, creative nonfiction, and copy editor at the Jet Fuel Review. She recently received the Lincoln Academy Award and will serve as a Student Laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois. She also serves as a Vice-President of Sigma Tau Delta. International English Honor Society, Rho Lambda Chapter. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, two children, and a golden doodle pup. She and her family recently established the Wolny Writing Residency for Lewis faculty, students and alums.

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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022
  • Issue #25 Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Art Spring 2023 >
      • David Carter Spring 2023
      • Annabel Jung Spring 2023
      • Ryota Matsumoto Spring 2023
      • Leah Oates Spring 2023
      • Eve Ozer Spring 2023
      • Emily Rankin Spring 2023
      • Esther Yeon Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Poetry Spring 2023 >
      • Emma Bolden Spring 2023
      • Ronda Piszk Broatch Spring 2023
      • M. Cynthia Cheung Spring 2023
      • Flower Conroy Spring 2023
      • Jill Crammond Spring 2023
      • Sandra Crouch Spring 2023
      • Satya Dash Spring 2023
      • Rita Feinstein Spring 2023
      • Dan Fliegel Spring 2023
      • Lisa Higgs ​Spring 2023
      • Dennis Hinrichsen ​Spring 2023
      • Mara Jebsen ​Spring 2023
      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
      • Susanna Lang ​Spring 2023
      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
      • Matthew Murrey Spring 2023
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
      • Wesley Sexton ​Spring 2023
      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
      • Sara Sowers-Wills ​Spring 2023
      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
      • Elinor Ann Walker Spring 2023
      • Andrew Wells Spring 2023
      • Erin Wilson Spring 2023
      • Marina Hope Wilson ​Spring 2023
      • David Wojciechowski Spring 2023
      • Jules Wood Spring 2023
      • Ellen Zhang Spring 2023
      • BJ Zhou Spring 2023
      • Jane Zwart Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
      • Eleonora Balsano Spring 2023
      • Callie S. Blackstone Spring 2023
      • Daniel Deisinger Spring 2023
      • CL Glanzing Spring 2023
      • Janine Kovac Spring 2023
      • Jeremy T. Wilson Spring 2023
      • Richie Zaborowske Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
      • Kalie Johnson Spring 2023
      • Amanda Roth Spring 2023