Poetry. The birth of Jesus floats in the center of this circle of poems, which bring together the strange and beautiful threads of lore that Christianity loosely binds in the oft-told story of the nativity. Animals, shepards, bugs and royalty speak in their distinct voices through Farber's taut cycle of lyrics.

"These poems are votaries, little fires Farber lights one by one as we turn the pages. Playful, somber, weighted with the foreshadow of sorrow, these flames burn steady, sure—giving off, in their aggregate, a fine and indelible heat."—Paulann Peterson

Author City: BOSTON, MA USA

Poet, concert singer, actress, novelist, translator; wife, mother, grandmother, widow, Norma Holzman Farber (1909 -1984) was the author of more than thirty books. Her poems appeared in periodicals including The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The New Yorker, and The New York Times; artists illustrating her books included Petra Mathers, Arnold Lobel, Trina Schart Hyman, and Tomie dePaola; composers including Daniel Pinkham set her words to music.

At eighteen, in 1927, Norma Holzman married Sidney Farber, pioneer in the chemotherapy of cancer, legendary for his care of the ill. He died in 1973.