A “haunting book” exploring shared and personal grief post October 7th, with an introduction by scholar, poet and national book award finalist, Alicia Ostriker.

A Prayer of Six Wings is an account of the poet Owen Lewis’s experience in the year following Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood Massacre on October 7, 2023. The poems portray the complexity of the grief shared by so many Jews of the diaspora and Israel, for the horror of the events of October 7, the subsequent war and suffering in Gaza, and the frightening spectre of rising anti-semitism. The collection begins with “My Partisan Grief” and moves toward a shared grief across embattled borders. A number of the poems in the collection are poetic journalism pieces, inspired by newspaper headlines. Others tell the story of his Israeli family and reflect on the grief of all victims of this war, how daily life continues in fraught circumstances, and prayers for peace remain elusive.

Praise

“An important book, not for the ideological but for the intellectually and emotionally engaged, and for lovers of poetry and truth... For readers exhausted by the news and resistant to the righteous rhetoric of both sides in this war, Lewis’ vital and elegant, humane and compassionate work will be embraced and treasured.” —Alicia Ostriker, The Holy and Broken Bliss: Poems in Plague Time

“These lovely, lyrical poems reach across oceans and centuries as Lewis skillfully links the hostages in Gaza to his own grandchildren, the founding of Israel to his own birthday, and biblical history to our contemporary moment. Lewis has composed a haunting book of striking conflations.” —Yehoshua November, The Concealment of Endless Light

“These poems blur the boundaries between private and public mourning, asking what it means to grieve for strangers, creating a new and stark language for grief, divided families and the persistence of everyday life.” —Joanna Chen, Frayed Light (translator)

Poems from the Book

A Belief in Order

(from captivity) When living children

Independence Day