Finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry Yehoshua November's second poetry collection Two Worlds Exist movingly examines the harmonies and dissonances involved in practicing an ancient religious tradition in contemporary America. November's beautiful and profound meditations on work and family life and the intersections of the sacred and the secular invite the reader-regardless of background-to imaginatively inhabit a life of religious devotion in the midst of our society's commotion. Yehoshua November's first poetry collection God's Optimism won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. November's poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner The Sun Virginia Quarterly Review and The Writer's Almanac. He teaches at Rutgers University and Touro College and lives in Teaneck NJ with his wife and children. "November manages to bring the same gravity and grace to both the common and the cosmic." --The Rumpus "November inspires welcomes surprises enriches wrestles and consoles in these poems that matter." --The New York Jewish Week "These poems are like a documentary film-close to life narrating episodes from everyday life (many of them happening within the Chassidic community). But under the skin of these poems a flame of passion-or compassion-is hidden. Hidden and palpable at the same time. That's how Yehoshua November creates such beautiful surprises for his readers." -Adam Zagajewski "I have read these beautiful poems many times over. Each time I find something new and wonderful and deeper and more spiritual therein. Two Worlds Exist is an even stronger book than November's first collection. So full of sorrow and humility and reverence love and pain and the actual stuff of our lives-the guilt of the small cruelties we inflict the large cruelties life inflicts wavering and unwavering faith that there is something greater than ourselves behind it all." -Liz Rosenberg "Yehoshua November's poems are deeply felt carefully crafted insightful and moving. While contemporary American literary culture tends to view &lsquoreligious' and &lsquoliterary' values in opposition November's poetry brilliantly bridges this divide. He writes with tenderness understanding and disarming modesty at the same time his characteristic subjects-the challenges posed by married life child rearing and suffering both physical and spiritual-are among the great subjects of literature and life." -David Caplan
