Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections (review)

Abstract

edited by Jonathan N. Barron and Eric Murphy Selinger. Hanover: University Press of England (Brandeis University Press), 2000. 416 pp. $60.00. In Introduction to Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and editors, Jonathan N. Barron and Eric Murphy Selinger, proclaim that their goal is to announce existence of major contribution to American poetry: various and increasingly self-conscious Jewish American poetic tradition. This tradition can be traced at least as far back as Emma Lazarus, York City-born poet of both Sephardic and Ashkenazic ancestry, whose sonnet, Colossus, is very first poem in this collection. Barron and Selinger open wide portals of their volume with the mighty woman with torch, Mother of Exiles, who welcomed all to shores of America, New Jerusalem. Rather than present poems and essays representative of single ideological or critical perspective, Barron and Selinger make point of inclusiveness. The volume is organized into two parts. The first part consists of poems and commentary on their poems by 26 different Jewish-American poets. Of their selections, editors note, no attempt was made to be definitive or canonical about contemporary Jewish American poetry. Instead, our main goal was to get representative selection of various kinds of American poetry currently being written. To large extent, editors succeed in this goal. The volume is characterized not only by diversity of poetic voices, but also by diversity of poetic forms. The second part of volume, Reflections, written by contemporary critics of Jewish American poetry, also reflects editors' commitment to variety. Among poets, one finds here practitioners of experimental or avant-garde language poetry like Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, and Ammiel Altalay. One also finds more traditional poets like Anthony Hecht writing in such conventional forms as sestina in his poem Book of Yolek. The majority of poets here, however, are practitioners of dominant mode of American poetry of last hundred years: free verse. These include such well-known poets as Gerald Stem, Maxine Kumin, Philip Levine, Marge Piercy, Alicia Ostriker, and host of other poets just now coming into prominence, including Hilda Raz, Jacqueline Osherow, and Michael Castro. The volume also makes room for ethnopoet Jerome Rothenberg and for feminist liturgical poet Marcia Falk. Essentially, than, one will find here house of worship for just about any reader, depending on their cultural and aesthetic orientation. Nevertheless, it is problematic that there are not included any Jewish American poets living in Israel (Shirley Kaufman, for example) in collection and very little mention of Israel in poetry. This is crucial omission because of unique historical situation of poets represented in volume, living and writing during time of historical revival of Jewish nationhood. It is especially interesting to see how poets responded to challenge put before them by editors, to select poem for collection and to provide a commentary about its relationship to poet's own sense of his or her `Jewishness.' How Jewishness is defined has long been contested among modern and post-modern writers, and in this volume we see just how unstable term can be. For some of poets here, like Anthony Hecht, for example, Jewishhess is tied to history and his own experience of liberating Nazi concentration camp. For others, like Alan Shapiro and Marge Piercy, Jewishness is connected to family, and in particular to aging parents and grandparents, figures who in poets' imagination invoke biblical stories. For many of women writers, Jewishness is term to be redefined and re-imagined, either through creation of more responsive liturgy or reinterpretation of traditional biblical figures and stories. …