A young woman’s coming-of-age narrative—on Manhattan streets and during a trip to Israel—vivifies this chapbook. “I changed/ my name to sound authentic,” one speaker declares, making “identity” a central theme undergirding this collection. Journeying through Israel, the narrator examines memorial sites and the “shaping” of history, where her own “second self” emerges. Early lessons— “They taught us that babies, before birth, /are cradled in God’s arms—” inform Wolper’s searching, twenty-first century, feminist vision. Her engagement with “the leash of Israel’s legacy” contributes to contemporary conversations about social justice, nation, and the realities of women’s lives.
–Robin Becker, a contributing editor and the poetry editor at the The Women’s Review of Books, author of Tiger Heron and many other titles
Caitlin Wolper’s Ordering Coffee in Tel Aviv is an intimate exploration of identity in two parts: as a woman and as a Jewish woman. The speaker finds themselves in different locations (Tel Aviv, New York City, the Dead Sea, the Holocaust Museum, and more) and finds the fluidity of the human body as a vessel for identity — and how this identity is shaped by the time and place we are in. Wolper takes our breath away with lines like “the void is filled with the past, its silent knowing” and ” Am I proven sinful/when the Dead Sea burns/the sex between my legs?” The book’s dual meaning in observing, both as a Jewish woman but also as someone quietly watching others, becomes a beautiful focus of the collection. How much control do we really have? As the speaker rides the train to different places, we also understand that while we want to control all aspects of our lives, our writing, even our reading, we are on a train to another world in this book, a world in which we all live privately. Wolper gives us a gift into this private world and hopefully, we never fully come out of it.
–Joanna C. Valente, author of Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, and editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault
Caitlin Wolper gives us the voice of a millennial “New York Jew on Birthright” traveling through Israel and the streets of Manhattan. These taut lyrics tell personal truths, potent with political gravity. Such urgency and yearning in a brilliant debut, such clear views of the sacred and profane, such a dangerous and dazzling spectacle this new book makes!
–Julia Spicher Kasdorf, author Shale Play
Kelly McNeice –
Catelyn is one of the most talented women I know. Her poetry is heart wrenching and incredibly beautiful. I can relate to a lot of these poems and her writing makes me feel represented.