American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology | National Humanities Center

Work of the Fellows: Edited Volumes; Fiction and Poetry

American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology

Edited by Benjamin Harshav (NHC Fellow, 1981–82), Kathryn Hellerstein, Brian McHale, and Anita Norich

American Literature; Poetry; Yiddish Literature; Jewish History; Judaism

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986

From the publisher’s description:

This remarkable volume introduces to the large English-speaking audience what is probably the most coherent segment of twentieth-century American literature not written in English. The range of American Yiddish Poetry runs the gamut from individualistic verse of alienation in the modern metropolis, responses to Western culture and ideologies, and experiments with poetic form and the resources of the Yiddish language, to the vitriolic associative chains of a politically engaged anarchist existentialist; from hymns to urban architecture and landscapes and the plight of African Americans to confrontations with the experiences of Jewish history and the loss of the Yiddish language. The bilingual facing-page format, the notes and the biographies of poets, the selections from Yiddish theory and criticism, and a comprehensive introduction to the cultural background and concerns of the poetry enhance the poems themselves.

Subjects
Literature / Fiction and Poetry / American Literature / Poetry / Yiddish Literature / Jewish History / Judaism /

Harshav, Benjamin (NHC Fellow, 1981–82), ed. American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology. Edited by Benjamin Harshav, Kathryn Hellerstein, Brian McHale, and Anita Norich. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.