“Each [poem] nearly bursts from its taut parameters, aching with sorrow and reverence, stitched with humility, love and pain, pulsing with passions both earthly and divine. […] [November] allows a radiant spiritual light to shine through deeply human fissures.”

–THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

 

“These poems are like a documentary film—close to life, narrating episodes from everyday life (many of them happening within the Chassidic community). But under the skin of these poems a flame of passion—or compassion—is hidden. Hidden and palpable at the same time. That’s how Yehoshua November creates such beautiful surprises for his readers.”

--ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

 

"Yehoshua November integrates his Orthodox Judaism with the everyday, through poems of radical clarity. Throughout his work, he shows that religious faith can be compatible with a poetry of deep, uncertain feeling."

--THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

 

“November inspires, welcomes, surprises, enriches, wrestles and consoles in these poems that matter.”

–THE NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK 

 

“November manages to bring the same gravity and grace to both the common and the cosmic.”

 –THE RUMPUS

 

“The duality of the intensely spiritual with the equally intense quotidian is a trademark of November’s writing. […] Two Worlds Exist is flushed with […] moments of light piercing the veil of darkness covering what November would view as this lower of two worlds.”

 -ELIE LICHTSCHEIN,

The Jewish Book Council

 

“The divisions between secular culture (poetry, literature) and Jewish tradition (liturgy, ritual), interactions with God and interactions with mankind, and the mystical spheres of heaven and life on earth are all cardinal directions on a greater compass, imbuing November’s personal recollections with conceptual weight. […] [Two Worlds Exist] is an urgent wrestling match played out on the page between opposing axes.”

-EMILY JAEGER, Salamander

 

“I have read these beautiful poems many times over. Each time I find something new and wonderful and deeper and more spiritual therein. Two Worlds Exist is an even stronger book than November’s first collection. 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.”  
-LIZ ROSENBERG

 

“Yehoshua November’s poems are deeply felt, carefully crafted, insightful, and moving. While contemporary American literary culture tends to view ‘religious’ and ‘literary’ values in opposition, November’s poetry brilliantly bridges this divide. 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.”

-DAVID CAPLAN