Everything Thaws

In Everything Thaws, bodies and memories break through the (supposed) permafrost. R. B. Lemberg's haunting poetic cycle is unsparing and keenly observed. Tracing their path from Ukraine to the Vorkuta GULAG, Hungary, Israel, and the USA, Lemberg crafts an unforgettable cartography of trauma, Jewishness, gender, war, and family history. This book expertly traverses dangerous ground. Children play in forests littered with bombs, and life-saving bridges disappear in snowstorms. In such terrain, a wrong step could mean death, yet there is no choice but to keep moving. Against cruelties, enforced silences, and the weight of generational horror, what can Lemberg do except "put it all into poems, / or, when the guilt gets too much, into turnips"? The thaw may be disastrous, but it must be faced, and Lemberg masterfully holds our gaze.

-Izzy Wasserstein, author of All The Hometowns You Can't Stay Away From

These are poems of reflection and empowerment, a journey of (self-)discovery brimming with raw feeling and a survivor's courage and wisdom. Lemberg excels at boldly drawing vivid scenes, memorable and complex characters, and emotionally charged landscapes. A deeply moving reading experience.

-Vitaly Chernetsky, author of Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization

'Turn it and turn it, for every thing is in it:' R.B. Lemberg's work has long been full of observations of the stark, the painful, and the utterly true. Taking its opening cue from the wreck of our climate, Everything Thaws is a swift-flowing personal history and a biting cultural commentary. It is also an intricate-illuminated map through what can't help emerging from that thaw: the diaspora of transness, Jewishness, how to be a parent, how to be a child. I was so stunned by its honesty and its hope; I have read and re-read it and there is always something newly revealed."

-Jeannelle M. Ferreira, author of The Fire and the Place in the Forest

R. B. Lemberg is "done destroying [themselves] for the sake of that anxiety of needing to look as if nothing ever happened." These poems are full of what happened - the food that was stolen to survive, the gender fails, the towns that no one believes existed, the near deaths and the gravesites. According to Lemberg, the past and the cold are as heavy and fragile as the thawing permafrost. While reading Everything Thaws, you'll feel the fleeting nature of everything we've named permanent, until "the truth itself is cratering."

-Sass Orol, author, The Shortest Skirt in Shul