Rachel Zucker speaks with writer Sabrina Orah Mark (author of The Babies and Tsim Tsum) right before the first night of Passover. They talk about Judaism, surrealism, Claudia Rankine and Kenneth Koch, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, being good at being pummeled, the prose poem, the kabbalistic concept of tsim tsum, the Holocaust, Jewish identification, what makes a Nazi a Nazi, empathy, Trump, slavery, living in Georgia, the commodification of trauma, teaching outside the academy, “the crying room,” writing fiction, using “I” again, raising an interracial Jewish family in the South, privilege, safety, fear, and believing and not believing in healing.
EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 33Books by Sabrina Orah MarkTsim Tsum (Saturnalia, 2009)
The Babies (Saturnalia, 2004)
Other Books and Authors Mentioned in the EpisodeClaudia Rankine
Kenneth Koch
John Donne
Rachel Zucker’s chapbook Annunciation
Coetze’s Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin, 2010)
Josh Bell
Reginald McKnight
Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness by Jane Lazarre
Bruno Schulz
Other Relevant LinksMagritte’s The Healer
Emmett Till
Controversy over the Emmett Till painting at the Whitney
“The Poet as Collector,” Sabrina’s lecture on trash
Rachel’s birth poem that mentions tsim tsum
Episode 61: Rosa Alcalá (Translation Series, Ep. 1)
Episode 60: Robin Coste Lewis
Episode 59: Alison S. M. Kobayashi
Episode 58: Cate Marvin
Episode 57: Dorothea Lasky
Episode 56: Jennifer Kronovet
Episode 55: Anne Waldman
Episode 54: Gerald Stern
Episode 53: Tommy Pico
Episode 52: Richard Siken
Episode 51: TC Tolbert
Episode 50: Inside Commonplace
Episode 49: CAConrad
Episode 48: Poets at MacDowell: Destiny Birdsong, Juleen Johnson, Jenny George, Eloisa Amezcua, & Amanda Galvan Huynh
Episode 47: Erin Riley
Episode 46: Allison Parrish
Episode 45: Tyehimba Jess
Episode 44: Matthew Zapruder
Episode 43: Airea D. Matthews
Episode 42: Gabrielle Calvocoressi
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