Unblessed, Unsung

poems by

Joan Barasovska

56 pages, $14 (+ shipping)
ISBN: 978-1-964277-30-1

Release Date: February 21, 2025

The Advance Sale Discount on this title has expired. For those who prefer to pay by check, the price is $19/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Joan Barasovska lives in Orange County, North Carolina. She serves on the Board of the North Carolina Poetry Society and hosts a monthly poetry series at independent bookstore McIntyre’s Books. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, print and online. Joan has been nominated for Best of the Net and twice for a Pushcart Prize. Her books have been reviewed in Pedestal Magazine, Big City Lit, North Carolina Literary Review, and The Main Street Rag. She is the author of Birthing Age (Finishing Line Press, 2018), Carrying Clare (Main Street Rag, 2022), and Orange Tulips (Redhawk Publications, 2022).

Joan Barasovska weaves a layered tapestry from the lives of her Jewish immigrant family in a new collection of poems, Unblessed, Unsung. Her impressionist telling of her family’s stories is a gateway of reflection for all of us, the children of immigrants. Jewish Tradition instructs us to ask, “Where have you come from? Where are you now? Where are you going?” The poignant poetry of “Unblessed, Unsung” leads the way for own journeys of self-discovery. ~Rabbi Cynthia Kravitz

This book is a powerful narrative for our time– a reminder of Meister Eckhart’s words, “Truly, it is in the darkness that one can find the light.” Unblessed, Unsung documents the struggle of an immigrant Jewish survivor’s daughter to piece together her family history from the fragmentary evidence of old photographs and thin threads of family stories. It is love, Barasovska concludes, that continues to sustain, like the blue glow of the “sabbath candle’s flame.”  ~Michael S. Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland, 2004-2009

In Unblessed, Unsung, Joan Barasovska carries us from the Eastern European shtetl to a Philadelphia tailor shop, from a bright baseball star to his businessman brother, from father to son, from mother to daughter. Drawn from photographs and family history, these poems form a steady line of family through dark times. Reading them is like standing in darkroom watching images emerge, silver on paper, under a red safelight: fragile magic. ~Mimi Herman, author of The Kudzu Queen 

To Hold It All

what overfilled
my mother
spilled into me

her family’s
bitter history
in this country

is untold—
I, who hold it all
must be the teller

Docking in New York Harbor, 1908

Each step up from steerage brings her closer
to the lights of a city she could not have dreamed of.
Elizabeth Goldberg grasps her black wool skirt
by the hem, her other hand on the cold stair rail.
Her best muslin blouse sticks to her skin.
The small wooden trunk of her belongings is below.
The engines of the SS Rijndam groan to silence.

Elizabeth is young, healthy, strong.
She knows how to sew and do fine embroidery.
Her needles, thimbles, and her pincushion
with its china lady on top, gift from her cousins,
are wrapped in muslin and batting in the trunk.
She cannot speak the language of the soldiers
and doctors who will send her back or let her stay.

The crowd on the deck stinks of wet wool and sweat.
The babies are dirty and sick,
the women yell at their children and husbands.
No one in steerage has slept through the night
since the Rijndam left Rotterdam.
Elizabeth fears the men; they pinch and grab.
She avoids the crowd and breathes clean night air.

In her coat pocket is a letter for her mother, Gitel.
How can she post it?
In the letter that will never reach Dubinik
Elizabeth tells Gitel about her nineteen days at sea,
how the ship rocked and the people groaned and cursed.
She has already seen things her mother will never see.
She will never see her mother again.

My grandmother tips her face up.
Her spectacles catch the stars, dimmer here
than in all of Lithuania, dimmer, dimmer,
but a few stars have followed her to America.

Wedding Portrait, 1910

In the studio photograph, rumpled muslin
covers the floor, dark waxed cloth
makes a scrim. Bride and groom
stand angled to each other,
her slight shoulder meets his chest,
her right hand grasps his.
His pinky finger is bandaged—
tailors use heavy, sharp shears.
She looks older, and she is, slightly.

By custom, a marriage broker,
a shadchan, arranged the match.
Ben is from Belarus, Liza from Lithuania.
He’s a tailor’s apprentice,
she’s a seamstress in the same shop.

The hem of Liza’s gown ripples around
a small bouquet of roses at her feet.
She’s crowned by an enormous bridal
bonnet, its broad brim trimmed with puffs
of white rabbit fur and roses. A tulle veil
floats to the floor. Lace and fringes
of white fur embellish her gown.
Liza’s plain round face is impassive,
framed by dark hair scraped back over her ears.
She wears spectacles, even for this portrait.

Ben is at least a head taller than his bride.
He wears a dark suit, not a morning coat. No hat.
The jacket is well-fitted to his bulky shoulders
and upper body. His shoes aren’t new.
He’s a man who turns heads: dark curly hair,
full lips, a touching softness of countenance.
Ben is in love with a married woman, Sarah,
whom he knows from his childhood in Minsk.
She lives just around the block.