Teraphim

An irreverent exploration of how poetic forms and mystical formulas transform in/formation.

In the Hebrew Bible, teraphim are secondary to the plot: apparently simple household idols or icons. But in his new playfully erudite book of essays and poems, Eden Pearlstein reveals the teraphim as a rich and layered symbol for any form of craft or cultural production. The result is a chimera of a book constructed out of a dizzying amalgam of forms—poetry, essay, philosophy, Dadaist language games, and Jewish textual hijinx—all shot through with mystical insight, lived-in observation, and an abiding care for life in all of its revelation and anticlimax. Engaging with the subterranean rhythm and structure of knowledge itself, no book takes as seriously the creation of the world through language, while subverting and laughing off the slippery amoral power of words themselves. Situated somewhere between kabbalah and conceptual art, Pearlstein's formally inventive Teraphim is a particle collider of paradoxes, inviting readers into a speculative Talmudic debate or Zoharic jam session between Coyote the trickster, Resh Lakish the thief, and Del the Funky Homosapien.

Teraphim was published by Deuteronomy Press and is distributed by Ayin Press (via Publishers Group West).