Unblessed, Unsung

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 granddaughter 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 flame.”

Michael Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland, 2004-2009,
co-editor, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 

Joan Barasovska weaves a layered tapestry from the lives of her Jewish immigrant family in a new collection of poems, “Unblessed, Unsung.” Her impressionistic 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 our own journeys of self-discovery.

Rabbi Cynthia Kravitz

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