The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse [Mass Market Paperback]

Various (Author), Irving Howe (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1997

A bilingual anthology of modern Yiddish poetry, with English translations. The work which aims to delineate the modern Jewish experience, includes samplings of 6 major poets and selections from the works of 33 others, with an introduction placing the poetry in its historic and critical context.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"In preparing this book we have weighed the competing claims of enlightenment and entertainment, consistency and common sense." With that goal, the editors produced an anthology of over 200 poems by 39 poets, arranged chronologically and with extensive biographical and textual notes. The poets range from Yitskhok Leybush Perets (1852-1915), considered a master of modern Yiddish literature, to the inventive Abraham Sutzkever (born in Vilna in 1913 and still writing in Israel). The poems themselves, all beautifully translated by a variety of translators, with themes ranging from old-country folk tales to American sweatshops, are accompanied by the originals. While Howe and Greenberg's Treasury of Yiddish Poetry (1976) covers some of the same material, it does not include the original Yiddish. Highly recommended. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The Excommunication by Zekharye-khone Bergner
Horses by Zekharye-khone Bergner
Tropic Nightmare In Singapore by Zekharye-khone Bergner
Christmas by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Hush And Hush - No Sound Be Heard by Mani Leib Brahinsky
I Am Mani Leyb, Whose Name Is Sung by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Indian Summer by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Inscribed On A Tombstone by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Odors by Mani Leib Brahinsky
A Plum by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Strangers by Mani Leib Brahinsky
The Sun Is Good To Everyone. It Shines For Little by Mani Leib Brahinsky
They Have Been Multitudes, Yea Multitudes, O God by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Through The Eye Of The Needle by Mani Leib Brahinsky
To The Gentile Poet by Mani Leib Brahinsky
You Only Know by Mani Leib Brahinsky
Adam by Celia Dropkin
The Circus Dancer by Celia Dropkin
The Filth Of Your Suspicion by Celia Dropkin
Like Snow On The Alps by Celia Dropkin
Dead Gentile Women In Greatcoats by Itsik Fefer
I've Never Been Lost by Itsik Fefer
So What If I've Been Circumcised by Itsik Fefer
Batlonim by Yankev Friedman
God No Longer Speaks by Yankev Friedman
Poetry by Yankev Friedman
Winter Song by Yankev Friedman
Bolted Room by Abraham Glants-leyeles
Disorder by Abraham Glants-leyeles
Fabius Lind's Days Dribble Away In Blood by Abraham Glants-leyeles
Isaiah And Homer by Abraham Glants-leyeles
1919 by Jacob Glatstein
The Bratslaver To His Scribe by Jacob Glatstein
Evening Bread by Jacob Glatstein
Genesis by Jacob Glatstein
Kleine Nachtmusik, Sels. by Jacob Glatstein
Mozart by Jacob Glatstein
Old Age by Jacob Glatstein
Our Jewish Quarter by Jacob Glatstein
Prayer by Jacob Glatstein
Sabbath by Jacob Glatstein
Sunday Shtetl by Jacob Glatstein
Wagons by Jacob Glatstein
Without Jews by Jacob Glatstein
Yiddishkayt by Jacob Glatstein
Dress Me In A Broad Arab Abaya, And Toss A Tales Over My Shoulder by Uri Zvi Greenberg
In The Kingdom Of The Cross, Sels. by Uri Zvi Greenberg
In The Land Of Grief Upon A Sun-day, A Black Feast Day In Your Honor by Uri Zvi Greenberg
King Shabtai Tsvi by Uri Zvi Greenberg
Mephisto, Sels. by Uri Zvi Greenberg
Mephisto, Sels. by Uri Zvi Greenberg
Ah, When Will Dawn Begin To Break? by Shmuel Halkin
Of Things Past by Shmuel Halkin
Russia by Shmuel Halkin
On The Roads Of Siberia by Leivick Halpern
Sacrifice by Leivick Halpern
Sanatorium by Leivick Halpern
A Stubborn Back - And Nothing More by Leivick Halpern
This Night Is Dark by Leivick Halpern
With The Holy Poem by Leivick Halpern
The Bird by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
From One Of My Letters by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
I Say To Myself by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
I Walk Alone, Absorbed In Thoughts Of Bread by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
In Central Park by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
Light - My Word by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
Memento Mori by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
O, Shmuel My Brother! by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
Sacco-vanzetti by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
Salute by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
The Street Drummer by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
The Tale Of The Fly by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
The Will by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
Yitskhok Leybush Perets by Moyshe-leyb Halpern
City! %you Called Me From Far by Dovid Hofshteyn
In Winter's Dusk by Dovid Hofshteyn
Procession by Dovid Hofshteyn
When Clenched Teeth Grate by Dovid Hofshteyn
August. I've Come To The Shtetl On A Cool by Izi Kharik
Here I Bend My Young Head And Am Still by Izi Kharik
Pass On, Pass On, You Lonely Grandfathers by Izi Kharik
And No One Knows What Became Of Him, Crazy Levi by Rachel Korn
I Stand In The Midday Of Your Life by Rachel Korn
Last Night I Felt A Poem On My Lips by Rachel Korn
On The Other Side Of The Poem by Rachel Korn
A Ball by Moishe Kulbak
Grandfather Dying by Moishe Kulbak
Grandpa And The Uncles by Moishe Kulbak
In The Tavern by Moishe Kulbak
A Man Built A Hut In The Woods by Moishe Kulbak
Nastasya by Moishe Kulbak
The Prayer Of A Poor Man In Hiding by Moishe Kulbak
Songs Of A Poor Man, Sels. by Moishe Kulbak
Summer by Moishe Kulbak
Ten Commandments by Moishe Kulbak
Uncle Avram Pastures The Horses by Moishe Kulbak
Vilna by Moishe Kulbak
Winter At Night In The Old Hut by Moishe Kulbak
Day And Night by Leyb Kvitko
Esau by Leyb Kvitko
Inscrutable Cat! by Leyb Kvitko
Russian Death by Leyb Kvitko
Epilogue by Zisha Landau
In The Tavern by Zisha Landau
The Little Pig With The Sawed-off Snout by Zisha Landau
The Strikover Rabbi by Zisha Landau
The Strikover Rabbi's Wife by Zisha Landau
This Evening by Zisha Landau
Dear Monsters, Be Patient by Razel Lebensboim
Entr'acte by Razel Lebensboim
Epitaph by Razel Lebensboim
Girls In Crotona Park by Razel Lebensboim
Once I Was Young, Hung Out by Razel Lebensboim
Slender Ships Drowse On Swollen Green Water by Razel Lebensboim
The Ballad Of The White Glow by Itsik Manger
The Crucified And The Verminous Man by Itsik Manger
Eve And The Apple Tree by Itsik Manger
For Years I Wallowed About In The World by Itsik Manger
Hagar Leaves Abraham's House by Itsik Manger
In The Train by Itsik Manger
Jacob Studies 'the Selling Of Joseph' With His Sons by Itsik Manger
The 'lovers Of Israel' At The Belzhets Death Camp by Itsik Manger
November by Itsik Manger
The Patriarch Jacob Meets Rachel by Itsik Manger
Saint Besht by Itsik Manger
There Is A Tree That Stands by Itsik Manger
After You, The Killed Of The Ukraine by Perets Markish
Ah, Generation After Generation, Will Come by Perets Markish
As One Of The Dead, I'll Enter by Perets Markish
Cattle Carry On Their Horns by Perets Markish
The Day's Not Enough For My Idle Meandering by Perets Markish
Fluttering Ribbons, Beads by Perets Markish
From The Heights, Mouths Like Sheaves by Perets Markish
Galilee by Perets Markish
Go Slow. Pilgrim Winds, From Rocky Lands And Wild by Perets Markish
Hey, Women, Spotted With Typhus And Riddled With Rakes Of. by Perets Markish
I Recall: Beside Some Rivulet, Lonely Shepherds Arrange by Perets Markish
It's A Milky Night, Like Moon-flesh Set In A Pitcher by Perets Markish
It's Good, It's Good Not To Shield The Heart This Way by Perets Markish
The Marketplace Sleeps, Its Booths Like Skulls by Perets Markish
My Homeless One, Will You Ever Fly Again? by Perets Markish
On The Mute Walls Of Empty Shops by Perets Markish
Out Of The Frayed Sackcloth - Breasts Of Filthy Cataracts. by Perets Markish
The Rinsed Fences Dry Themselves In The Wind by Perets Markish
Sunk To The Loins In Silence, The Town Sits by Perets Markish
This Is The Bread, Sels. by Perets Markish
God Of Mercy by Kadya Molodovsky
Invitation by Kadya Molodovsky
A Stool At The Head Of My Bed by Kadya Molodovsky
White Night by Kadya Molodovsky
Women's Songs (1) by Kadya Molodovsky
Women's Songs (2) by Kadya Molodovsky
I Love Your Lustful, Fainting-weary Gaze by Leyb Naydus
I Often Watch You Leave The Morning Service by Leyb Naydus
Intimate Melodies by Leyb Naydus
Now, After Grandmother's Death, I Come For The Greetings. by Leyb Naydus
To Be Alone. Alone. Entirely Free by Leyb Naydus
Monish by Isaac Leibush Peretz
Eternal Now by Gabriel Preil
A Lecture by Gabriel Preil
Like Feathers by Gabriel Preil
The Record by Gabriel Preil
Sober by Gabriel Preil
The Surprised Pen by Gabriel Preil
The Cat Merchant by Yisroel Rabon
A Funeral by Yisroel Rabon
Mendacious Song by Yisroel Rabon
Children's Games by Abraham Reisen
Future Generations by Abraham Reisen
Household Of Eight by Abraham Reisen
Kinds Of Luck by Abraham Reisen
The Last Street by Abraham Reisen
A Prayer by Abraham Reisen
So! by Abraham Reisen
To A Woman Socialist by Abraham Reisen
What Have I To Do With Music, Child? by Abraham Reisen
The First Cigarette by Joseph Rolnik
Home From Praying by Joseph Rolnik
Neighbors by Joseph Rolnik
The Net by Joseph Rolnik
Poets by Joseph Rolnik
The Sweatshop by Morris Rosenfeld
The Climb Up by Israel Jacob Schwartz
In The End-of-summer Light by Israel Jacob Schwartz
At My Wedding by Yankev-yitskhok Segal
In Me by Yankev-yitskhok Segal
Korets Landscape by Yankev-yitskhok Segal
Psalms by Yankev-yitskhok Segal
Winter by Yankev-yitskhok Segal
An Adage Concerning A Man And An Old Book by Yisroel Shtern
For The Curious by Yisroel Shtern
Men Who Hunger by Yisroel Shtern
The Clever River by Eliezer Shteynbarg
The Lion And The Mouse by Eliezer Shteynbarg
The Pig And The Nightingale by Eliezer Shteynbarg
Bolsheviks by Aba Shtoltsenberg
Boring Days by Aba Shtoltsenberg
Dream Canaan by Aba Shtoltsenberg
Galician Winter by Aba Shtoltsenberg
Wolf Bezberider by Aba Shtoltsenberg
Young Ukrainians by Aba Shtoltsenberg
Death Of An Ox by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Deer At The Red Sea by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph Inscribed On The Slat Of A Railway Car by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Epitaph Inscribed On The Slat Of A Railway Car by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Firemen Attacked Me Late At Night by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Frozen Jews by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Here I Am, Full-grown, Flourishing by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
How? by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
In The Hamlet by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
In The Sack Of The Wind by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
The Lead Plates At The Rom Press by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Poems For A Diary: 1980 by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Poems From A Dairy: 1974 by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Poems From A Dairy: 1975 by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Poems From A Dairy: 1976 by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Poems From A Dairy: 1981 by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Poetry by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Toys by Abraham (avrom) Sutzkever
Budapest by Judd Teller
His Relative Confides In Professor Sigmund Freud by Judd Teller
The Jews Of Brisk by Judd Teller
Minor by Judd Teller
Three Jewish Boys Write To An Ancient Chinese Poet by Judd Teller
Twenty Lines To A Tree by Judd Teller
Last Apple by Malka Heifetz Tussman
Songs Of The Priestess: 2. Her Plea by Malka Heifetz Tussman
Songs Of The Priestess: 3. Her Lament by Malka Heifetz Tussman
Water Without Sound by Malka Heifetz Tussman
With A Fool by Malka Heifetz Tussman
Wudowhood by Malka Heifetz Tussman
The Coarse Old Maid by Leyzer (mekler) Volf
I Am Not A Honey-hearted Child by Leyzer (mekler) Volf
Montefiore In Vilna by Leyzer (mekler) Volf
Executioners by Berish Weinstein
In The Port by Berish Weinstein
Railroad Thieves by Berish Weinstein
Six Lines by Aaron Zeitlin
Ten Groschen by Aaron Zeitlin
To Be A Jew by Aaron Zeitlin
Twelve Autumn Lines by Aaron Zeitlin
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140094725
• ISBN-13: 978-0140094725
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,120,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trembling lips, August 23, 2001

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse (Mass Market Paperback)

The last time my friend from Vilna visited, in 1993, I shared this book with her, purchased a few years earlier at a New York remainder sale. It contains both the Yiddish and English translations, on either side of a page, of 39 Jewish poets. Her lips began to tremble and move as she read the verses, in Yiddish, of poets she had known in Vilna, Abraham Sutzkever and very likely Moyshe Kulbak.

It's no wonder. Listen to the fifth stanza of Sutzkever's "In the Hamlet," about Siberia, where his father died in the 1930s.

"Into the quenched corners of the room,/
The moon breathes its solitary brilliance./
My father's face is white as the moon,/
The snow's silence weighs upon his hands."

(Translation by Chana Bloch)

The poems are all that good, and better. It is eerie reading these great works. The rich literary heritage of Yiddish was all but wiped out in the Shoah. Yiddish remains vibrant in certain Jewish communities today, but only as a liturgical language. Few poets now work in Yiddish.

The great Yitskhok Leybush Perets, born in Zamosc, Poland in 1852 died in Warsaw in 1915. Leyb Naydus died in Grodno in 1918 and Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, from Zloczow, died in 1932 in New York. But several of these poets themselves perished in the Holocaust --- including Kulbak (1940), Yisroel Shtern (Warsaw, 1942), Yisroel Rabon (Ponary, 1941). Others were swept into the maw of the Soviet war on culture, dying who knows where.

Some survived and later emigrated. Rokhl Korn, for example, fled to --- and then from --- the Soviet Union. In a sense, Aaron Teitlin, who emigrated from Uuarovo, Russia to New York in 1939 writes for them all. Certainly, he writes for me.

Six Lines

"I know that in this world no one needs me,/

me, a word-beggar in the Jewish graveyard.

Who needs a poem, especially in Yiddish?

Only what is hopeless on this earth has beauty/

and only the ephemeral is godly

and humility is the only true rebellion."

(Translated by Robert Friend)

####

We all need these poems and their humility. You can see why my friend's lips trembled.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen