Turn It & Turn It: Post-Secular Essays and Poems

An electric collection of essays and poems by America’s most prominent feminist Jewish poet and critic.

What does a post-secular poetics look like? How might feminist midrash, irreverent play, and renewed engagement with spiritual lineages reshape the way we read? In this bold and wide-ranging collection, Alicia Ostriker—author of the groundbreaking Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America—grapples with these questions. With incisive and lyrical force, she wrestles with patriarchy without discarding its canons: reimagining biblical women as activists and tricksters, rethinking the face of the biblical Other, and helping to restore the divine feminine to Jewish consciousness. 

Alongside her own midrashic interventions, Ostriker explores the work of poets from multiple traditions—like Muriel Rukeyser, Emily Dickinson, Lucille Clifton, Gerald Stern, Paul Celan, and Mohja Kahf—who insist on engaging inherited canons while refusing to bow to them. What emerges in this vibrant collection is part literary criticism, part poetic manifesto, part spiritual testimony, and an irresistible invitation to shape a renewed spiritual imagination. Drawing its title from a rabbinic directive to study Torah over and over, Turn It & Turn It invites readers into a space where tradition and transformation meet—where the secular and the sacred are entangled, and new paths of meaning emerge.


About the Author

Alicia Ostriker has published nineteen collections of poetry, been twice nominated for the National Book Award, and has twice received the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, among other honors. As a feminist critic, she is the author of the now classic Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America, and several books on poetry and the Bible. Her poems have been translated into numerous languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. She was the New York State Poet Laureate from 2018 to 2021 and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2015 to 2020. She lives in New York City, is on the advisory board of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry, and loves leading poetry-writing workshops. 


Praise for Turn It & Turn It

“In this erudite, eloquent collection, exhilarating in scope, Alicia Ostriker examines an eclectic range of subjects, from biblical narrative and midrash, to diverse American and European poets, to feminist theology. Demonstrating a mastery of multiple genres—poetry, essay, and drama—Ostriker dives into the depths of her own inner life. In writing that is always lucid, she answers Muriel Rukeyser’s famous call: Ostriker tells the truth of her life, and the world splits open.”
—Marcia Falk, author of The Sky Will Overtake You and The Book of Blessings

“Whether she’s commenting on the work of other poets, reclaiming the stories of biblical women through midrash and poetry, or seeking to restore the exiled Shekhinah to her rightful place, Alicia Ostriker’s writing is always challenging, provocative, and urgent. This varied collection gives readers a strong sense of the range and power of her work.”
—Judith Plaskow, author of Standing at Sinai and cofounder of the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion

“With Turn It & Turn It, Alicia Ostriker has once again created a work that is both liberating and transformative. In her readings of other poets—including Dickinson, Rukeyser, and Stern—along with her readings of biblical stories, Ostriker uncovers meanings that would have remained trapped had it not been for her courage, imagination, and depth and breadth of knowledge. At the risk of saying something heretical, I’ll add that with this book of essays and poems, Ostriker adds another branch to the Tree of Life. Turn It & Turn It keeps that tree alive, and without that tree, we wouldn’t have the oxygen we need to breathe.”
—Richard Chess, author of Love Nailed to the Doorpost

“The trickster-mystic Alicia Ostriker has made a career of retrieving the repressed, and in this new book, she lays bare the treasures she has found.”
—Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, author of Sisters at Sinai and coauthor of The Hebrew Priestess

“In the middle of the journey through my copy of this book, it occurred to me that Alicia Ostriker is not only a poet who profoundly influenced my writing—she is also a major spiritual figure whose irreverently reverent ways profoundly influenced my very inner life. Then again, to quote Ostriker quoting Rukeyser, “Oh for God’s sake / they are connected / underneath.” I’m grateful for everything Ostriker writes and teaches, but this book, even by her standards, is a standout. It delves into matters of writing and spirit with humor, ease, erudition, and a lot of practical thinking around the very praxis of reading, writing, and living as a cosmic Jewish poet in this twenty-first century.”
—Jake Marmer, author of The Neighbor Out of Sound


Book Details
146 pages | Paperback | 5.063 x 7.75 in. | ISBN: 9781961814424
Publication date: August 4th, 2026

Cover art from Sonia Delaunay's Rythme, 1938
Author photo by Miguel Pagliere