“Poet Alicia Ostriker is also a highly original scholar/teacher of midrash, the commentary and exegesis of scripture  (the same root as madrasa, place of study). Here she ‘studies’ Jewish history, Jewish passion, Jewish contradictions, in a compendium of learned, crafted, earthy and outward-looking poems that show how this quest has informed and enriched her whole poet’s trajectory.”
—Marilyn Hacker

“A Song of Songs, which is not Solomon’s but Alicia Ostriker’s. A great age-old hymn to life, to flesh, to memory, is revised again on these pages, with gusto, with passion, with clarity, with eros, with grief. If there is God, it is the mourner’s or the mystic’s God; if there is faith, it is the faith in our future. This is gorgeous poetry, as Jewish as it is universal.”
—Ilya Kaminsky

”A milestone volume that readers of Jewish poetry will reference, and revel in, for years to come. While Ostriker’s contribution to the poetry world in the past decades has been invaluable, her contribution to the realm of Jewish poetry specifically has been absolutely formative. Her experiments with Midrashic poetry, riffs on Psalms, liturgy, usage of these sources to explore personal questions of faith, gender, and family are simply tremendous.”
—The Forward