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This remarkable volume introduces what is probably the most coherent segment of twentieth-century American literature not written in English. Includes a bilingual facing-page format, notes and biographies of poets, and selections from Yiddish theory and criticism.
This anthology presents a rich but little-known body of American Yiddish poetry from the 1920s to the early 1950s by thirty-nine poets who wrote from the perspective of the proletarian left. Presented on facing pages in Yiddish and English translation, these one hundred poems are organized thematically under such headings as Songs of the Shop, United in Struggle, Matters of the Heart, The Poet on Poetry, and Wars to End All Wars. One section is devoted to verse depicting the struggles of African Americans, including several poems prompted by the infamous Scottsboro trial of nine African American men falsely accused of rape. Home to many of the writers, New York City is the subject of a varied array of poems. The volume includes an extensive introduction by Dovid Katz, a biographical note about each poet, a bibliography, and a timeline of political, social, and literary events that provide context for the poetry. Winner of the Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for Outstanding Translation A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts—first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets—by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion—including the readiness to risk one’s life—to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author’s interviews with several of the story’s participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned parti...
A probing reading of leftist Jewish poets who, during the interwar period, drew on the trauma of pogroms to depict the suffering of other marginalized peoples. Between the world wars, a generation of Jewish leftist poets reached out to other embattled peoples of the earth—Palestinian Arabs, African Americans, Spanish Republicans—in Yiddish verse. Songs in Dark Times examines the richly layered meanings of this project, grounded in Jewish collective trauma but embracing a global community of the oppressed. The long 1930s, Amelia M. Glaser proposes, gave rise to a genre of internationalist modernism in which tropes of national collective memory were rewritten as the shared experiences of m...
Provides information on the Yiddish language and literature, describes poetic forms, and gathers poems in Yiddish and English by seven of the best Jewish American poets
Part literary history and part medical sociology, Gilman's book chronicles the careers of three major immigrant Yiddish poets of the twentieth century - Solomon Bloomgarten (Yehoash), Sholem Shtern, and H. Leivick - all of whom lived through, and wrote movingly of, their experience as patients in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Gilman addresses both the formative influence of the sanatorium on the writers' work and the culture of an institution in which, before the days of antibiotics, writing was encouraged as a form of therapy. He argues that each writer produced a significant body of work during his recovery, itself an experience that profoundly influenced the course of his subsequent literary...
In New York in 1907, a group of avant-garde Yiddish poets came together to transform Yiddish literature. Seeking a pure artistic expression, they would rid Yiddish poetry of foreign influences and overbearing political and religious rhetoric. Although influenced by their Eastern European heritage, these poets were uniquely American in their focus on exploring the individual. Calling themselves Di Yunge (The young ones), this group was led in part by Reuben Iceland. From Our Springtime is Iceland’s memoir as well as a reflection on the lives of the Di Yunge poets. With its vivid characters, beautifully crafted descriptions, and snippets of poetry, this book is a work of art in its own right and an essential resource for anyone interested in Yiddish American poetry. Translated into English for the first time, From Our Springtime brings this period in New York literary history to life and tells the story of how these poets transformed Yiddish poetry from an expression of working-class struggles to a form of Yiddish high art.
A rich and provocative overview of Jewish American poetry.
This Yiddish and English volume is a collection of works from Glatstein's previous 6, focusing on Jewish fortitude during the Holocaust while honoring those who died.
Walt Whitman has served as a crucial figure within the tradition of Jewish American poetry. But how did Whitman, a non-Jewish, American-born poet, become so instrumental in this area of poetry, especially for poets whose parents, and often they themselves, were not “born here?” Dara Barnat presents a genealogy of Jewish American poets in dialogue with Whitman, and with each other, and reveals how the lineage of Jewish American poets responding to Whitman extends far beyond the likes of Allen Ginsberg. From Emma Lazarus and Adah Isaacs Menken, through twentieth-century poets such as Charles Reznikoff, Karl Shapiro, Kenneth Koch, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, and Gerald Stern, this book demonstrates that Whitman has been adopted by Jewish American poets as a liberal symbol against exclusionary and anti-Semitic elements in high modernist literary culture. The turn to Whitman serves as a mode of exploring Jewish and American identity.