December 10, 2010

Kim (Freilich) Dower is a svelte and stylish woman, but she looms large on the literary landscape of Los Angeles. Doing business as “Kim-from-L.A.,” she is among our most admired and beloved book publicists, a ubiquitous and cheery presence at every venue where authors and readers gather.

But Kim is also an accomplished writer in her own right, as we learn from her newly published poetry collection, “Air Kissing on Mars” (Red Hen Press: $18.95).  Her work is exquisitely crafted but the tool marks are invisible on the printed page, and each poem reads like an intimate conversation with the poet herself — bright and lucid, funny and sharp, and always full of life.

The point was made at a recent reading that Kim gave at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.  As always — and she will not be surprised to hear me say it — Kim was superbly attired and accessorized, but it was only in one of the poems in “Air Kissing on Mars” that I found a clue to the origins of her sense of style.

“My mother,” she writes in a poem titled “Different Mothers,” “did know about soil or earth worms.” And she goes on to observe:

“City mothers, we know about bus routes, restaurants/Broadway, the people on the eighth floor./Mine taught me to accessorize/bring the ideal hostess gift./have my keys in hand/when I enter the building.”

Many of the poems in the collection share the same kind of city smarts, and “Air Kissing on Mars” can be approached as a kind of poetic handbook for contemporary urban life in both New York and Los Angeles. A certain wry sense of humor is always at work — the title of “The Nudists Are Getting Ready to Pack” is a joke in itself —  but the poems are infinite in their variety. Kim is sometimes subtly but undeniably erotic (“they made out on the carousel swan,/kissed til their lips bled”), sometimes openly confessional (“not even my therapist can know/the things I do in my car”), and sometimes unapologetically sentimental as in a superbly bittersweet poem titled “If My Father Were Alive.”

“If my father were alive/heaven would be calm,/the woman in the apartment next door/would still be dressing up, her fuchsia prints/shrieking into the night.”

My single favorite poem in the collection — and something of an outlier in terms of form and style — is “She Showed Me Pictures of Injuries,” a tour de force that pulses with a strange sexuality as the poet describes an unlikely encounter between a guy in a Wisconsin hotel lobby and two roller-derby skaters dubbed Hot Pink Suede and Jazz Night Queen.  To be sure, skating injuries have something to do with what’s going on here, but that’s not all.

“he closes his eyes sees her flying/she tugs at Jazz Night dizzy their short skirts/singing to him he’s cold in Wisconsin he watches them kiss/he met a girl who skates across his face”

The best way to enjoy the poems in “Air Kissing on Mars,” I think, is to gather with friends, open a bottle of wine, pass the book around, and take turns reading them aloud.  Something not unlike that took place at Barnes & Noble — a few of the appreciative folks in the audience were definitely aglow! — and Kim Dower’s poems flew off the page and soared around the room.

“Poetry makes nothing happen” warned Auden, but after closing my copy of “Air Kissing on Mars,” I think he was wrong.

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. He can be reached at books@jewishnournal.com.

When clients start working with me, almost invariably, they come seeking a greater sense of control in their lives. The need for control is a very natural inclination for us. Control brings certainty in an uncertain world and with that comes a measure of security. Or so we hope.

Trouble is we plan and G-d so often has another design in mind.

In helping people find the deep inner sense of safety that they’re looking for, I guide them to do the opposite of that tendency to control. I teach them to surrender and to trust. Surrender to the flow of Life, and Trust that they have the capacity to match and rise above whatever Life may bring their way.

Life is always and entirely beyond our control. All we’re meant to do is accept it for what it is, recognize the flow and then show up for ourselves. Each of us has a unique role to dance in the much larger choreography of life. And that’s all we need to do. But we must do it. We must dance our dance. And we must trust that we are what it takes to live our particular life just the way it needs to be lived. Therein lies real security.

Misha Henckel guides individuals to live their ideal lives. Follow her on Twitter @mishahenckel. Email {encode=”misha@mishahenckel.com” title=”misha@mishahenckel.com “}

It was an evening of money and music.

Which isn’t terribly surprising when media mogul Haim Saban is your host. For one, he’s listed as a Forbes billionaire, but lesser known is his passion for music: In 1966, he played bass in an Israeli rock band, The Lions of Judah, and after that, he made his first fortune composing scores for television cartoons.

So it wasn’t altogether unexpected that by combining his business acumen with his predilection for music that Saban was able to raise almost $9 million for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces western regional chapter during last night’s gala dinner in Century City: First achieve your goal, then reward your team.

The event, hosted for the fourth consecutive year by Saban and his wife, Cheryl, was a lesson in how to throw a party. There was the astonishing entertainment (Andrea Bocelli), the better-than-average food (smoked salmon salad), and syrupy videos of IDF soldiers designed to tug at the heartstrings. All of which proved that no one else in the Los Angeles Jewish community is quite as deft at enticing others to take up a cause than the Sabans.

“At the conclusion of Hanukkah, we remember how the Maccabees triumphed in the face of odds,” Haim said while addressing the crowd. “Let’s not forget that the Jewish people overcame the Syrian-Greeks, the Roman empire, the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, the Holocaust. We are a resilient people, a strong people, a successful people.” And with a defiant voice, as if he were speaking directly to Israel’s enemies, he said: “We are here to stay and stay forever.”

And nothing ensures a place at the table like a whole lot of money. If there’s anything Saban knows well, it’s business—and a friendly challenge to his comrades went a long way last night when he kicked off a kind of bidding war that brought the fundraiser’s total from an initial $2.5 million to $8,750,000.

“On the way in, Cheryl said to me, ‘I think we should match what we raise tonight,’” Saban told 1,000 dinner guests from the podium. “I said, ‘You’re the boss.’”

The “unprecedented sum” of $2.5 million—which, until that moment had been the highest amount raised during the Sabans’ tenure as chairs—became $5 million.

“Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander, who struck the perfect pitch as the evening’s emcee quipped, “This is better than my temple building fund.”

With pep and wit, Alexander prompted the crowd to follow Saban’s lead, gushing over Saban’s good looks and feigning romantic interest for laughs. “Who wants to become the second most attractive man in the room?”

With that, Leo David, a former Israeli soldier himself and the founder of the FIDF western regional branch, stood up and pledged $1 million.

“Mr. Leo David just became more handsome than Haim Saban,” Alexander said.

Next, Paul Guerin, the president of the west coast FIDF chapter, pledged $1 million and after that, the floodgates opened…

FIDF western regional director Miri Nash, dressed sharply in a black cocktail dress that accented her long blonde hair, began dashing around the room with a microphone in hand, tossing it off to anyone who wanted to pledge more for the pot. A 17-year-old named Dominic pledged $1,000; another family gave $18,000 on behalf of the Persian synagogue Nessah; yet another family promised $100,000; and on and on until the final major gifts—$500,000 from Guess jeans founder Paul Marciano and $1 million more from his brother, Maurice—concluded an exceptionally energizing and effective philanthropic ploy.

Even at four times the amount expected, Alexander pressed on: “If anybody else would like to become attractive… God will write you into the book; you don’t even have to go to high holidays next year.”

The intensity escalated even further when David Foster, the 16-time Grammy winning artist took over the mic and the piano for the musical portion of the evening. Surprisingly boisterous and funny, Foster invited American Idol runner-up Katherine McPhee to perform her rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” before introducing “the best singer in the entire world”—Andrea Bocelli—to come on stage for a 6-piece program that included hits “The Prayer” and “Time to Say Goodbye.”

But the most tender part of the night was when 9-year-old piano prodigy Ethan Bortnick took the stage to perform Mozart and turned towards the IDF soldiers sitting in the front row, gushing: “You guys are my new heroes.”

Read my cover story on Haim Saban at jewishjournal.com