Rachel Barenblat holds an MFA from Bennington and is author of four chapbooks. She is a rabbinic student who blogs as the Velveteen Rabbi. Find her online here.

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Praise for Through (2009):

This can’t have been an easy experience to write anything about at all, let alone to distill into ten brief, searing, and luminous poems. As with Rachel’s earlier chaplainbook, these are accessible poems with several different layers of meaning, so I think almost anyone who’s ever gone through a miscarriage will get something out of it. Which is not to say the audience should end there: miscarriage is a subject every bit as relevant and revealing of the human condition as warfare, for example. So why doesn’t it get more attention from writers and artists? -- Dave Bonta, Through

The Velveteen Rabbi, Rachel Barenblat, has written a collection of poems about miscarriage — based on her own — and offers Through to any reader who wants or needs them. As Dave Bonta points out, miscarriage is not a widely discussed topic, certainly not by men too often, but not even by women. Find comfort and companionship in shared grief and experience. For yourself, or someone you know. -- Deb, writing about loss: a specific kind of loss

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Praise for chaplainbook (2006):

"The work has breath in it. Reading it at night, alone, in total silence, I can feel the capacity of my heart increasing. I think of the first time Adam laughed and wondered what that strange sensation was. I think of the way fluorescent lights gleam on polished hospital floors." -- Teju Cole

"Barenblat knows how to make a poem, and it is incidental that she has shaped these poems out of her hospital experience. Indeed, she has made seventeen strong poems for this collection. She recognizes that whatever the 'obvious' subject, a poem is always about the poetry of our existence, that ineffable lifting up that occurs when we are most fully human. It matters less that these poems are about events in Barenblat's internship in the chaplaincy program; it matters most that she pays attention to the importance of those moments, and to the hidden power which fills them with meaning. We are blessed that Barenblat can speak that which otherwise stays unspoken." -- Tom Montag, author of The Big Book of Ben Zen, in "Poetry made of pain."

"I got your book in the mail late last week, and I've been reading it over. It's a testament. I love the woman who cannot remember whether her husband is alive, resurrection at level two, the festival of the trees, one breath ready or not. I love them even though many of them hurt to hold onto, because they hurt to hold onto." -- Kate Abbott

About Laupe House:

chaplainbook is the first offering from Laupe House. Laupe House is a cooperative press comprised of bloggers who take a literary approach to an unorthodox pursuit of enlightenment. If the internet is a sprawling anarchic mecca, Laupe House is a sweet ramshackle patchwork house tended by volunteer groundskeepers who make each other tea. It’s bigger than it looks from the outside; its doors open onto several continents. Right now someone is burning the midnight oil at Laupe House, whittling words with quiet glee.

Laupe House Press is an imprint of Phoenicia Publishing. Laupe House's most recent release is Brilliant Coroners, an anthology of poems co-edited by Rachel Barenblat and Rachel Rawlins. Learn more here.