“Poetry”

What kind of life will there be after the Resurrection of the Dead?

I may not believe in an afterlife or in resurrections, but I do believe that cultures can be reawakened and revived in new generations.

Jan 07, 2020

Radosav discusses her experiences as a translator of Yiddish poetry into Romanian and her evaluation of certain translations from other languages into Romanian or from Romanian into Yiddish. The essay outlines a strategy of “translation-recreation,” in which the translator balances a sense of fidelity to the source text with the attempt to creatively reproduce its internal mechanism.

Dec 16, 2019

Adriana X. Jacobs on her commitment to literary translation.

Nov 12, 2019

Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's morbid, postmodernist ballad in a new, creative translation by Michael Shapiro.

Nov 08, 2019

Eisenberg reviews Shtoltse Lider, a multimedia stage show, with songs in Yiddish and English, and explanations and evocations in Swedish, from Swedish duo Ida and Louise.

Jun 25, 2019

Jun 13, 2019

Mark I. West offers suggestions for teaching Jacob Glatstein's 1943 Anti-Fascist children's poem.

Jun 10, 2019

May 27, 2019

May 22, 2019

May 16, 2019

A new translation of David Edelshtat's proletarian poem a shtikele broyt.

Apr 30, 2019

Apr 13, 2019

This teaching guide offers suggestions and reflections from several scholars about teaching erotic Yiddish poetry.

Apr 09, 2019

The opening section of a Grade’s collection Shayn fun farloshene shtern (Shine of Extinguished Stars, 1950).

Mar 25, 2019

A list of all Yiddish books of poetry published in 2018, sorted alphabetically by the author’s last name, together with my individual idiosyncratic impressions about what this book tells us about Yiddish poetry today.

Jan 31, 2019

This study presents a translation and analysis of Aaron Zeitlin’s (1898-1973) poem “Keter: Fragmenten fun a rapsodye,” published in 1923, at the height of the Warsaw expressionist explosion of the early twenties.

Nov 29, 2018

Zeitlin’s kabbalistic poem offers a stunning, yet difficult, fusion of Yiddish expressionism and futurism on the one hand, and mystical and messianic thought on the other.

Nov 29, 2018

Two poems by Celia Dropkin

Oct 10, 2018

New research and translation of Avrom Sutzkever's work leads to a multilingual, multinational convening of Yiddishists in Copenhagen, Denmark and in Lund, Sweden.

Jun 28, 2018

A playlisticle of Yiddish speech acts available in digital formats.

Jun 25, 2018

A new translation of Malka Lee's "Baleydikt" from her 1932 collection Lider.

May 01, 2018

Not a translation! An original English-language Yiddish poem.

Apr 18, 2018

Jordan Finkin offers resources and ideas for teaching this unusual poem.

Mar 12, 2018

This volume, edited and translated by Anna Maja Misiak, is the first edition of Debora Vogel’s work in any language to include all of her prose and poetry.

Mar 06, 2018

A standalone poem by Jacob Glatstein

Nov 09, 2017

A new translation of Jacob Glatstein's powerful and playful 1943 children's poem.

Nov 09, 2017

"I'll Take Off My Shoes" and "Abraham Our Father Takes Isaac to the Sacrifice" by Itzik Manger.

Oct 02, 2017

A review of Claudia Rosenzweig's new critical edition of the bove-bukh.

May 25, 2017

Weininger analyzes Anna Margolin's cycle of poems entitled "Mary," exploring her use of Christological themes and figures and the expression of identity and self-definition in the poems.

May 18, 2017

The second in a series of teaching guides, this one for Maia Evrona's translation of Yoysef Kerler's poems "Old Fashioned" and "The Sea" (1979).

Jan 17, 2017

Aaron Zeitlin's poem about his father, Hillel Zeitlin

Jan 11, 2017

Three poems from Abraham Sutzkever’s collection Poems from My Diary.

Dec 05, 2016

New translations of two poems from Anna Margolin's lider.

Nov 08, 2016

Leyzer Volf's "Yiddish Hiawatha", written over three days and published in a romanized script.

Oct 12, 2016

A poem about Sacco and Vanzetti, originally published the day before their execution.

May 24, 2016

New translations of four sections from Markish's book-length modernist poem.

May 18, 2016

A new translation of Jacob Glatstein's 1956 poem about the "Qibya affair."

Feb 21, 2016

Translations of two poems by Yoysef Kerler

Feb 15, 2016

New translations of six poems from Sutzkever's 1960 collection Oasis.

Dec 20, 2015

Hear the voice of Yiddish poet Aaron Glantz-Leyeles as he meditates on the loneliness of the Yiddish writer while still embracing the magic of the American landscape.

Oct 06, 2015

Jacob Steinberg's poetry between Hebrew and Yiddish, between mourning and melancholy.

Sep 24, 2015

Sutzkever's cycle of poems about his childhood years spent in Siberia: "In the light-dark snowed-under / village of my childhood in Siberia / blossoms bloom from shadows’ eyes— / countless quicksilver blossoms..."

Sep 08, 2015

An essay on the late Benjamin Harshav, one of the most important literary scholars of the last decades, and how in his work Yiddish served as a bridge between Europe, Israel, and North America, between poetry, translation, and scholarship.

Aug 26, 2015

A prose poem from Abraham Sutzkever's 1975 volume Green Aquarium. "A man with a heavy bag on his back approaches a dark city in a rainstorm..."

Aug 12, 2015

How can we read Yiddish poetry across time to find a new common language? How can we create a space for the imagined dialogues of Kadia Molodowsky and Adrienne Rich with their foremothers, an alternative narrative of blood and text?

Aug 11, 2015