Poet Rokhl Kramf (1906, Gali­cia – 1988, Israel) began her lit­er­ary career in War­saw, and set­tled in Pales­tine in 1938. From ear­ly on her poems were acclaimed by crit­ic Avrom Lis; ​“She emerged on the scene with a sin­gu­lar poet­ic voice, sparse and inti­mate, as if the poems were writ­ten to her­self alone — at the same time, her poems are ele­vat­ed, intel­lec­tu­al­ly devel­oped, with an inten­si­ty that is meditative. ^{1 1} Lis, Avrom, In der mekhitse fun shafer, (Tel Aviv: Y.L. Peretz Far­lag, 1978), 122. 

Kramf’s poems are short, under­stat­ed in their lan­guage, and mas­ter­ful exam­ples of how a great writer can relay the most com­plex emo­tion­al truths in the fewest pos­si­ble words. The longest poem in Volkns viln vey­nen, the col­lec­tion which con­tains the fol­low­ing two poems, is about three pages; the short­est, six lines. The short poems con­tain all the inten­si­ty of reli­gious proverbs. Her themes are marked­ly fem­i­nist, and in both form and con­tent evoke feel­ings of yearn­ing and incom­plete­ness, desire, and rela­tion­ships to the ances­tral and the transcendent.

Kramf is atten­tive to not only the words them­selves, but also the spaces between them — usings pac­ing and shape, line breaks, and unusu­al punc­tu­a­tion to play­ful and evoca­tive effect.

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