November teaches writing at Rutgers University and Touro College. His poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Prairie Schooner, VQR, and on NPR. Yehoshua November is the author of two books of poetry, God’s Optimism, a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and Two Worlds Exist, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. He writes with tenderness, understanding, and disarming modesty at the same time, his characteristic subjects-the challenges posed by married life, child rearing, and suffering, both physical and spiritual-are among the great subjects of literature and life. While contemporary American literary culture tends to view "religious" and "literary" values in opposition, November's poetry brilliantly bridges this divide. Yehoshua November's poems are deeply felt, carefully crafted, insightful, and moving. So full of sorrow and humility and reverence, love and pain and the actual stuff of our lives-the guilt of the small cruelties we inflict the large cruelties life inflicts wavering and unwavering faith that there is something greater than ourselves behind it all. Two Worlds Exist is an even stronger book than November's first collection. Each time I find something new and wonderful and deeper and more spiritual therein. I have read these beautiful poems many times over. That's how Yehoshua November creates such beautiful surprises for his readers. But under the skin of these poems a flame of passion-or compassion-is hidden. Watch as a human teenager fights against countless mystical creatures, making helpful allies along the way. These poems are like a documentary film-close to life, narrating episodes from everyday life (many of them happening within the Chassidic community). One World Two is the eagerly awaited follow-up to One World and another globe-trotting collection of stories. The TWO WORLDS trilogy is an action-packed, fantastical series that middle grade readers will thoroughly enjoy from beginning to end. November inspires, welcomes, surprises, enriches, wrestles and consoles in these poems that matter. Each nearly bursts from its taut parameters, aching with sorrow and reverence, stitched with humility, love and pain, pulsing with passions both earthly and divine. spiral from the quotidian to the otherworldly, and back again. November manages to bring the same gravity and grace to both the common and the cosmic. November's beautiful and profound meditations on work and family life, and the intersections of the sacred and the secular, invite the reader-regardless of background-to imaginatively inhabit a life of religious devotion in the midst of our society's commotion. Yehoshua November's second poetry collection, Two Worlds Exist, movingly examines the harmonies and dissonances involved in practicing an ancient religious tradition in contemporary America. Read "Prayer" from Two Worlds Exist in The New York Times Magazine! Finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and the 2017 Paterson Poetry Prize
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