Dec 07, 2023
Cover page of Reisen’s poetry collection, Lider (Vilna, 1924). Courtesy of the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library.
INTRODUCTION
Sarah Reisen (1885-1974) was born in Belarus into a highly literary family. Her father and two brothers were also writers. She began publishing her work at the age of seventeen. Reisen wrote poems and plays, translated Russian classics, and adapted works by Wilde and Defoe for use in Yiddish schools. She arrived in the United States in 1933, and died in New York. Although she was prolific, Reisen failed to garner the fame of her brothers, particularly her elder brother Avrom, to whom the poem below is addressed.
This piece appeared as “Tsu mayn bruder Avrom Reisen,” in Lider, Vilna, 1924, p.3. It was translated by Faith Jones with Anita Norich and David Mazower.
Further Reading:
On Sore Reyzn
Sore Reyzn: Books in Yiddish
My poems are as rich
as yours are in tone—
But believe me, my brother,
they are my own.
Out of torment
was born my verse:
Though by the same mother
We both were nursed.
