Rimonim - Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation

“Aurora Levins Morales's poetry radiates wisdom, warmth, and fortitude. A prophetic, life-centered guide for times of tumult and struggle.” —Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents 
Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of rupture and uncertainty, beloved movement poet Aurora Levins Morales brings us a prayer book for the street, for reconstituting the future through our gestures in the present. In these poems of devotion and protest, Levins Morales speaks across and through time with an undeniably prophetic voice. 
Written in collaboration with various communities looking to honor, unravel, and rebuild Jewish liturgies, Rimonim is a book of lyric in the most immediate sense—of poems that are meant to be read and sung. Rooted in tradition and flowering in the tumultuous present, these poems will both accompany specific Jewish practices and offer inspiration for the sacred work of human liberation, where joy meets justice. 
Ultimately, these forty-nine poems honor the forty-ninth year, when it was taught that everything in the land would begin anew, everything redistributed and freed, when the people would see that everything on this earth was “ready to wake and bloom / just under the skin of what is.”

About the author

Aurora Levins Morales is a cuir Ashkenazi Boricua writer of poetry, essays, and fiction. A child of blacklisted communist parents, she grew up immersed in social justice movements and the poetry of liberation, and came into public voice as part of the collective eruptions of radical art of the 1970s and ’80s. She is the author of nine books, including Medicine Stories, Kindling, Remedios, and Silt. Her poetry is widely used in synagogues and churches, in schools and at rallies, painted on walls and recited at weddings, translated into seven languages and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. After forty years in the San Francisco Bay Area, she now lives at Finca la Lluvia, an agro-poetry project in the western mountains of Boriken, also known as Puerto Rico.The Story of What is Broken is Whole: An Aurora Levins Morales Reader will be published in 2024 by Duke University Press. Find her on Patreon and at www.auroralevinsmorales.com.

Summary

“Aurora Levins Morales's poetry radiates wisdom, warmth, and fortitude. A prophetic, life-centered guide for times of tumult and struggle.”
—Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents
Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of rupture and uncertainty, beloved movement poet Aurora Levins Morales brings us a prayer book for the street, for reconstituting the future through our gestures in the present. In these poems of devotion and protest, Levins Morales speaks across and through time with an undeniably prophetic voice. Written in collaboration with various communities looking to honor, unravel, and rebuild Jewish liturgies, Rimonim is a book of lyric in the most immediate sense—of poems that are meant to be read and sung. Rooted in tradition and flowering in the tumultuous present, these poems will both accompany specific Jewish practices and offer inspiration for the sacred work of human liberation, where joy meets justice.
Ultimately, these forty-nine poems honor the forty-ninth year, when it was taught that everything in the land would begin anew, everything redistributed and freed, when the people would see that everything on this earth was “ready to wake and bloom / just under the skin of what is.”

Foreword

Marketing

• Pre-publication submission to industry reviewers (Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, Booklist, etc.).
• Outreach to the organizations who commissioned poems in Rimonim to ask them to share news of the book in their newsletters and social media.
• Outreach to the 8 visual artists whose work appears in the book to ask them to share about Rimonim in their newsletters and social media.
• Outreach to Jewish educators and rabbis at synagogues, JCCs, and community organizations about using poems from Rimonim in services, rituals, and educational programming.
• Outreach to Jewish political organizers about using poems from Rimonim in protests and community events.
• Outreach to academics who teach classes in political poetry, Jewish studies, and Puerto Rican studies about opportunities for course adoption.
• Outreach to independent booksellers and libraries.
• Digital advertising with progressive Jewish organizations and publications.
• Targeted social media advertising.

Publicity

• Launch reading & subsequent author speaking engagements.
• Author appearance at the Puerto Rican Studies Association conference soon after publication day.
• Press campaign to place excerpts and reviews in print and digital publications like Fence, The Brooklyn Rail, The Forward, Jewish Currents, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and to place interviews with the author on Jewish, political, and literary podcasts.

Product details

• Authors: Aurora Levins Morales
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 05.07.2024, delayed
• EAN: 9781961814172
• ISBN: 978-1-961814-17-2
• No. of pages: 122
• Illustrations: Illustrations throughout (color and black & white)
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Judaism; POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Inspirational & Religious, POETRY / Caribbean & Latin American, Judaism, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Political & Protest