In the Days of the Cotton Wind and the Sparrow

Overview

In the Days of the Cotton Wind and the Sparrow is a mystical encounter with the allegorical inhabitants of a remote civilization. A lone chronicler welcomes us into the life of the settlement, and introduces a cast of mythical figures that include the woman who dissects dreams, the cliff dwellers, and those entrusted with the task of keeping the communal fires burning. This essential landscape is the staging ground for the inner sanctum of a most intimate experience. Through his vivid language and imagery Rafi Aaron creates a compelling poetic odyssey, with a uniquely indigenous voice, that covers vast distances of human and spiritual terrain.

Reviews

"Rafi's poems bask in the ethos of a world of prophets on mountaintops, and stray-travelers-at-your-door, timeless and existing in different incarnations. Everywhere there is the whisper of a teasing seductress, fraught with confusion, sackcloth and uncertainty, and in that whisper you hear the master of the poet's craft, 'banishing your thirst' for travel beyond the borders of all that you know." —Paul Hamann, The New Quarterly

His prose poems are "powerful, evocatively imagined works, rich in detail, and intellectual resonance." —The Malahat Review 

Rafi Aaron is a poet "who allows simple, fresh, vivid words to cut individual jewels out of the material of language." —The Toronto Star

Author Biography

Rafi Aaron of Toronto has written a play and four collections of poetry. His book Surviving the Censor: The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam received the Jewish Book Award for Poetry. He has read his poetry in such venues as the Canadian Consulate in New York City, the Jewish National Museum in Washington, D.C., and the University of St. Petersburg, Russia. A documentary on Rafi's poetic works, entitled The Sound Traveller, has aired on Bravo TV and Book Television.