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Books – Poetry

Awards & Nominations for Unio Mystica

• Nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize for “Orchard” published in Unio Mystica.

Reviews of Unio Mystica

Review by JoSelle Vanderhooft
The Pedestal Magazine
Issue 58, June 21-August 21 (2010)

Unio Mystica
Daniel Y. Harris
Cross–Cultural Communications
ISBN Number: 9780893042615

Whenever I review a book on a subject with which I am only partially familiar or entirely unfamiliar, I like to state my limitations upfront; and when it comes to the Jewish mysticism explored in Daniel Y. Harris’s Unio Mystica, I am on deeply unfamiliar ground. As readers may have noticed (and will see later in this review), I am a Catholic who is more at home with the mystical work of St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avilla, and St. Hildegard of Bingen than I am with the Kabbalah, about which my reading has been sparse and ventured little beyond adolescent curiosity. My lack of dialogue with this text is the biggest limitation I face when discussing this chapbook, which is grounded largely in Jewish mysticism, Talmudic commentaries, and rabbinical writings. Though I will proceed as carefully through these gaps in my knowledge as I can, I may still make a number of errors. Thus, I beg the more informed reader’s patience and charity.

Even with allowances made for my own ignorance, I can say that Unio Mystica is a startling and provocative collection that dazzles both in image and execution, and which, I think, will push most readers (even those familiar with Jewish mysticism) towards dictionaries and encyclopedias of angels and philosophy in order to better engage with its mysteries.

Helpfully for novice and master alike, Harris has included quotations from the works that inspire each of this chapbook’s thirty–four pieces. Indeed, the following poem often reads like a commentary on the idea or quotation that precedes it. Consider, for example, “Orchard” (which, coincidentally, Harris has dedicated to Cross–Cultural Communications’ founder and publisher Stanley Barkan).

Four entered into the orchard of mystical knowledge: Ben Azzai, Ben
Zoma, Aher and Rabbi Akiva…Ben Azzai looked and died…Ben Zoma
looked and was affected mentally…Aher cut down the plants…Rabbi
Akiva departed in peace.
–Talmud: Tractate, Hagigah 14b

This is where peace is shaped through declensions
of nothing: Eckhart’s nicht, Saint John of the Cross’s nada,
the Taoist wu, the Buddhist sunyata, and the Kabbalist

ayin. This is where peace is ghost–faint, sun–dark
and sequenced through pardes, the pomegranate orchard,
Edenic alias, where Akiva eyed the mystical shape

of the Godhead. The sacral grid emits the words of Akiva’s
vassals, generations later, and we hear the shibboleths,
idyllic as anyone who emerges unscathed from millennial

hysterics. This is where peace, then, is the colored strand
of yihudim–the future primordial, unified, departing in peace,
which is the arrival, before a name occupies our attention.

The four holy men mentioned in the Talmudic quotation are the four rabbis of the Mishnaic period, and from what I can understand this account of their visit to paradise (“pardes”) is a fairly famous story. As with all mystical accounts, the story is multilayered, as is the term “pardes.” From what I have gleaned while doing research for this review, pardes is also an acronym that stands for an understanding of the Torah on four different levels: literal/simple, allegorical, comparative, and mystical. It seems to me, then, that the four rabbis symbolize these levels in ascending order. For example, one who understood the Torah on only a literal level would be overloaded in front of the full godhead, and one interested only in dissecting the Torah (the comparative level) would cut down the plants of paradise. Only the mystic (who arrives at this understanding only through mastering the preceding levels) can look on paradise unscathed.

Although paradise is often conceived of as a place of blithe and rather unremarkable happiness in today’s popular culture, Harris (and these four rabbis) sees it as a far more dangerous plane. It is, Harris explains, a null place, a place of peaceful nothingness that many world religions and their sects speak of and which few individuals can understand without proper reflection. It is a slippery place that names alone cannot describe, as it is often the very act of naming which takes away from or undermines a pardes–like (prerequisite) understanding.

As you can probably see, Harris’s poetry touches on deep and deeply complicated themes and concepts, and each piece must be read on multiple levels, which means that exploring each poem in any detail requires near–Talmudic commentary. While I would very much like to wrestle with more of the poems in Unio Mystica, doing so would, unfortunately, take up the bulk of space allotted for the other two chapbooks slated to be reviewed. The desire to do so, however, exists, which means, I think, that Harris’s work has accomplished what mystical poetry of all religions sets out to do: invite the reader into meditation, thought, and an openness to sitting with the unknown. This is a dizzying and deeply satisfying book for me simply because it has whetted my thirst for the divine and further contemplation.