City of Skypapers
, a 2021 National Jewish Book Award Finalist in poetry, records the con­ti­nu­ity between the per­son­al and the nation­al, the present and the his­toric. Ground­ed in the Jew­ish cal­en­dar and land­scapes of Tel Aviv, and leav­ened with self-dep­re­cat­ing humor, these poems exam­ine what it took “to get here today”—and these todays add up into this rich, max­i­mal­ist col­lec­tion. Poems engage with the Arab-Israeli con­flict, Gaza, and race in per­son­al ways. Oth­er poems doc­u­ment sin­gle moth­er­hood and quo­tid­i­an moments with clar­i­ty and pow­er. “Time ripens” in Sulak’s poems “on the vines and limbs, along the laun­dry line.” A full life emerges in these pages, and we are enriched by hav­ing inhab­it­ed that life.