Prose from Poetry Magazine
Translator’s Note: “Release, Please” by Anonymous
BY Peter Cole
“Release, Please,” most likely composed in Babylonia in the tenth century, is a plea for strength employing gentleness, or a gentle poem invoking might. Now part of the Sabbath liturgy, it can be read in both straightforward and mystical fashions, as it encodes a forty-two letter name of God within its Hebrew lines.
Poet and translator Peter Cole was born in Paterson, New Jersey. His collections of poetry include Draw Me After (2022), Rift (1989), Things on Which I’ve Stumbled (2008), The Invention of Influence (2014), and Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations (2017). With Adina Hoffman, he wrote the nonfiction volume Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (2011). Described...