Erev Gildene — Adrienne Novy
“Erev” meaning “Evening” or “The eve of” in Hebrew and “Gildene” meaning “Golden” in Yiddish, Adrienne Novy’s collection shines lights on the many facets of sexuality, heartbreak, body image, shame, and what it means to be Jewish but not feel Jewish enough. From Timothée Chalamet to Harry Styles and beyond, Novy uses music and pop culture as a coping mechanism for mental health recovery, the rise and fall of a first relationship, and the ways chronic illness and pain have been left out of the bedroom and sex education. Erev Gildene is both the examination of the mirror, the necklace you forgot to remove before the shower, and the gold it all leaves in its wake.
Praise for Erev Gildene
“Erev Gildene is an ekphrasis, a celebration, a chorus of contemporaries, heroes, and mapmakers that put wind in the speaker’s sails while Novy steers the ship, and us, forward into the unknown. Turns out we’ve known it all along, echoed back to us in all our favorite scenes and songs, memories and a seafoam dress. These poems illuminate within and without, making connections, making us laugh, making music the way the best books do. This collection is in conversation with spirit and everything that fuels a spirit. But it is also rooted in the body, its pains, its joys, its particularities, and all the inheritances we contain. Get in bitches, it’s Erev Gildene szn.”
—Jess Rizkallah, author of the magic my body becomes
“A deeply whimsical and burstingly bright foray into the selves we construct in relationship to media and popular culture, Novy’s gorgeous second collection, Erev Gildene, sings queer Jewish truths and “is quiet & neon till dawn comes.” May we all bear witness to these incantations opening portals into the speaker’s inner worlds, reminding us all that everything we feel, touch, love, is inspired by all that is around us, all that we are taking in, enlivening us, making us shine, making us see our own magic.”
—Sam Herschel Wein, author of fruit mansion
“What a privilege to grow as a writer alongside that of Adrienne Novy’s work. To read the ways she unearths the unequivocal truths of our world through such familiar vessels: the tunes of Harry Styles, Jewish representation in Hollywood, body dysmorphia like a museum gallery. Within Novy’s words, we are floating. We are enraptured in this cosmos named Erev Gildene. Translate the title and you’ll get a golden evening; eat the poems and you’ll find a body made for your shadow. This book sent me mining for every way a fit of hope can hide in plain sight. What a joy to return to these poems over and over again. To find new meanings in every break, in every colloquial movement. Novy is of our brightest pop culture poem arbiters, a force still etching her proverb into the clouds.”
—Matt Mitchell, author of The Neon Hollywood Cowboy
About the Author
Adrienne Novy is an artist, musician, & writer with Cat Eye Syndrome. She is a nominee for Bettering American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and is a 2020 graduate from Hamline University’s Creative Writing program. She is the author of Crowd Surfing With God (Half Mystic Press, 2018) and the mini-chapbooks, We Have Each Other’s Flowers (Zines + Things, 2020) and Pull (Ginger Bug Press, 2020). Adrienne’s most recent work can be found in Passages North and “You Flower/ You Feast: An Anthology of Prose, Poems, & Plays inspired by Harry Styles”. She lives in the Midwest & has a cat named Laurie.
