Checklist, Recipe, Yellow Brick Road: A Review of Pamela Wax's WALKING THE LABYRINTH

Pamela Wax is a poet-rabbi and while she produces first-rate art, bibliotherapy also appears to be a priority.  Walking the Labyrinth is an apt metaphor for this odyssey. While this book purports to be a series of elegies, it is also a deft memoir that avoids the heavy-hand of an incessant first person. Its emphasis is less memoir than spiritual autobiography, but the occasional first person explorations subtly hold a place for both her own idiosyncrasies and struggles as well as her readers: she creates space for your I and for my I.

The persona “pretends to be who she is, tries to be normal, spills words all over herself and loses her names”—an excerpt from “The Woman Who: A Found Poem,” says it all and says it best. We are offered frequent glimpses into the panoplies of pain associated with this quest for virtue—often in tandem with the duties of family and tribe. The grief and consequent suffering accompanying this attainment of virtue is resolutely probed.

Her elegies for her brother Howard and many others act as both catalyst and muse. Her awareness may invite us all to stop working so hard at virtue, but also reveal Wax’s prime compulsion—a longing for a guaranteed “checklist, a recipe, some yellow brick road,” a map or atlas revealing the important “to do’s,” all of which reflect her need for a world in which she can attain righteousness—where she can be safe and in control—a world in which she locates the proper path to attaining goodness. This is often followed by worry—the need not to get it wrong. It being life, with all its attendant uncertainties: all the self-blame, remorse & grief, especially the guilt inherited by those who sacrifice themselves for so-called higher or holy quests: our spiritual leaders. Our gurus, priests and rabbis.

In a moment of insight Wax describes a cartoon caterpillar on a couch being advised by her butterfly therapist: “the thing is, you really have to want to change.” This comical image and dialogue triggers a listing of internal guilt-trips. She goes on to detail minor masochistic behaviors she indulges in, in order to undermine any sense of entitlement or right to claim grace. In this psychic no-win situation her sense of humor & attempts to reach for optimism are laudable, yet the pathos remains notable.

Wax defines herself through her tribe, yet avoids religious zealotry; however, details about Judaic traditions might distance some readers who are not familiar with a diction that includes words like kvelling, shomer, hora, and kaddish.

A poem that helps clarify cultural differences is “I Am Not Descended from Stoics Like Jackie O.” as she explores the reality of being “descended from Eastern European Jews who turn their prayers towards a Wailing Wall because the danger & despair are everywhere and eternal and what else did they know to do?” Is this book Wax’s personal wailing wall? Possibly.

Occasionally Wax slips into manifesto, but still manages to hold fast to her suffering: “when my guilt takes a form other than flesh. I mix it with naked rage because never again is pitched capriciously in the ominous night tent of the world—feeling all this almost guiltlessly on sunny days.”

Her obsession with virtue is portrayed in her gently self-mocking poem “I Keep Getting Books About Character.” As she reads and rereads many translations of Paths of the Just & Duties of the Heart, we are treated to a light-hearted bit of satire, best illustrated by a sign in her office that reads:

I want to be a better person but then what?  one queries. A much better person?  

She romps often with sound and enjoys occasional rhyme in her pithy description of her readings of “Medieval tomes in pious tones.” Her zig zags between despair and humor keep her afloat and help the reader process this confessional.

The format varies occasionally as in her odd first poem “Howard” which she divides into two sections: part one is titled “I. How” and part II. is “Ward.” This playful character sketch introduces us to the book’s central elegy for her brother Howard, a suicide. She returns to this formatting later in the book.

Walking the Labyrinth is the mother of all elegies—it holds too many to remember or list. It presents us somehow with a life lived primarily through a lens of loss but without the anticipated and attendant nihilism. It is not an easy read but well worth the effort, even if your life is not steeped in family ritual or religious legacy. Dive in. See if you can swim. It may be best to prepare for reading a book of elegies by not being prepared—if preparation is even possible. Let its stream of consciousness flow. Drop control needs. Practice what the poet finds so difficult. Relinquish her needs for “checklist, recipe and Yellow Brick Road.” Step into her journey. I feel fortunate to have met and eventually to have groked my first rabbi, Pamela Wax. Join her, as she invites, us, much “like Rumpelstiltskin,” to “weave seaweed into song.”