Living Root: A Memoir (S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) [Hardcover]

Michael Heller (Author)

Book Description

Series: S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture | Publication Date: August 2000

In this literary memoir, poet and essayist Michael Heller interweaves family and personal history with reflections on language, poetry, religion, and memory itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

American poet Heller (b. 1937) has written a memoir of his youth in Brooklyn and Miami Beach, FL, that mixes in history regarding his family's hometown of Bialystock, Poland, and World War II. Heller, who considers himself a Jewish Objectivist poet in the tradition of Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, and Louis Zukofsky, turns his words to the world of his parents and family. His father's sentimental and flawed personality, his mother's difficult heart condition, his grandfather's faith, and his aunt's mental disease leave Heller with wounds that only language and literature can heal. This book contains poems, notes on poems, journal entries, poignant descriptions, and philosophic thoughts. Through them Heller explores the Jewish experience in Europe and America, as well as the nature of reading and writing. The disparate elements cohere, leaving the reader moved by the seamless joining of personal tone and historic incident. Recommended for literature and Jewish studies collections.DGene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

Living Root is the story of an education, a writer's wandering through personal and family history, through texts and traditions. Recalling his family's origins in Bialystok as well as his own childhood in Brooklyn and Miami Beach, poet and essayist Michael Heller creates a rich mosaic of reflections on his past, his origins, and the entanglements of thought and religion that have shaped his life and writing. Living Root enlarges the memoir genre, vividly illuminating the interactions of memory, autobiography, and the evolving creative self.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 177 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791446336
• ISBN-13: 978-0791446331
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,276,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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