Themes and Range of Yiddish Poetry
New Year Greetings
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(A Seven Arts Feature)
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Yiddish is Dead! Long Live Yid-
dish! is a paraphrase of a cry
heard over the" years in monarch-
ist capitals denoting the passing
of a king, ascension of another,
and the continuity of the respec-
tive royal dynasty. This in a
sense would apply to our vexed
and plagued mame-loshen which
its eager-beaver detractors have
in the course of decades repeated-
ly laid to rest, but was kept alive
by its ardent devotees.
In this country, the major cen-
ter of Yiddish creativity, Yiddish
and Hebrew arrived in the Eight-
ies on the crest of Jewish mass
imigration. Yiddish expression,
particularly poetry, developed in
nourishing, meaningful diversity.
Much of the subject matter was
shtetl-oriented; some writers at-
tempted to bridge the old world
and the new. A good deal of the
writing today is still removed from
RACHELLE DRAPERIES
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all our customers and friends.
KE 7 4339 or KE 7 8494
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Happy New Year
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Automobiles Delivered Anywhere
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New Year Greetings
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The Environment Leaves Nothing to Be Desired
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New Year Greetings
PEERLESS DISTRIBUTING CO.
8720 Livernois
TE 4-6400
Best Wishes for a Happy New Year
Phillips Shoe Company
Northland Center (Two Stores)
Eastland Center
Westland Center
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Happy New Year
R.E.T.S. ELECTRONIC SCHOOLS
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"Visit Our New Home"
the American scene. Obviously,
this cre ativ e detachment has
nothing to do with the writer's
love of his adopted country, and
his lingering remoteness from its
soc io-cultur al frontiers.
There have been notable excep-
tions. Over half a century ago
Yiddish novelists captured the
complexities of the immigrants'
foundering between agony and
achievement in America's econ-
omic jungle. Some, like Boruch
Glazman and Aaron Raboy, un-
reeled„more idyllic phases of Jew-
ish settlement in rural Georgia
and the Western plains.
In poetry J.J. Schwartz exhilir-
ated readers with a book-length
significant epic called "Ken-
tucky," and Reuben Ludwig pro-
duced a remarkable cycle of "In-
dian Motifs." A. Glanz-Leyeless
hymned our country, and also in-
troducdd in translation (and co-
gent evaluation) topflight Ameri-
can and British verse classics. It
was the time of movements, mani-
festoes, schools, and blossoming
magazines which reflected con-
trasting diversions from establish-
ed art norms.
The "Junge" departed from the
sweatshop-blues chanted by the
"Alte" versifyers, swayed by the
then dominant theory of art as a
'social weapon. In rejecting the
drum-beating doctrine of class-
struggle they linked up with the
more tranquil Impressionist
school. At the same time Glanz-
Leyeless, the impeccable poet and
critic Jacob Glatstein, and the late
poet and scholar Nochum B. Min-
koff, heralded Introspectivism, and
cultivated the soil for the Imag-
ists. Second Avenue and Green-
wich Village, once citadels of
Yiddish and American avant-
garde esthetics, locked arms in
parallel re-assessment of art as
an extension of human experience.
A plethora of accomplished poets
do honor the Yiddish lyric. They
include Ephraim Auerbach, Chaim
Grade, Aleph Katz, Jeremiah
Hesheles, Melech Ravitch, Abra-
ham Tabatchnik, who is also an
incisive analyst of literary trends,
and Rajzl Zychlinska.
In conclusion I submit selected
poems in my translation to give
non-Yiddish readers a taste of the
themes and range touched by our
contemporary verse writers.
THE CLOUD-JEW
By Jacob Glatstein
The cloud-Jew, the gray one,
arrives with his limpid sorrow.
An astonished somnolence
falls upon indifferent windows.
The cloud-Jew writes Hebrew char-
acters
in a wildly alien sky.
When I start reading, explaining, in-
ternreting,
they dissolve in tears, threaded tears,
before I could divine their meaning.
A shin', blind on all three eyes,
becomes a suspended heart
that darkens without a shudder
of a trampled Commandment . . .
The empty synagogue melts away
over the red Crosses
of a church-ridden city,
and the cloud-Jew carries it off into
the heights.
Hatchets and hands rise up
but cannot reach it.
Only my own lips quiver
like a twilight harp
when the destined vision shuts my eyes
with its hallowed sharpness.
• letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
RISE AND FALL
By A. Lutzky
The sun rises at dawn
in the glow of decline.
Season's Greetings
SQUARE DEAL HEATING
& COOLING, INC.
Heating, Cooling and Wiring Contractors
10163 Gratiot
W, 1-2345
IN-SINK-ERATOR
Food Waste Disposer
Manufacturing Co.
I
20013 James Couzens
342-3252
LONG, LONG AGO
Meyer Ziml Tkatch
Long, long ago,
God has seen the tears,
heard the cries—
but no longer.
The tears of the world
have long since
veiled His eyes.
The lamentation dulled His hearing,
Now we weep to a Blind One,
Cry out to a Deaf One.
Friday, September 16, 1966-55
A Happy New Year
CHRISALLE
HAIR FASHIONS
Specialists in Hair Tinting
17190 Livernois
862-2337 — 862-2338
1∎ 040000∎040100
IN MAY
Rajzl Zychlinska
In the month of May
a mad woman wanders
in the city squares.
She quarrels with the young grass,
berates the blue sky,
and screeches—
nobody knows why,
Her battered clothes hang loosely,
her shoes are unlaced.
The sack she carries
bulges with all her possessions:
old newspapers,
crops of rain,
crusts of bread,
shards of colored glass.
Children run for cover.
Birds trail after her.
A PRAYER
By Meyer Ziml Thatch
You punish me, Lord.
I do not complain.
I accept your blows with love.
All I ask you in prayer
is to give me strength
to endure your punishment . • •
Happy New Year to Our
Friends and Patrons
CONTINENTAL
HAIR FASHIONS
19191 Livernois
UN 1-9100
Happy New Year to All
LOUIS COHEN
AND SON
KOSHER MEATS
12939 West 7 Mile Rd.
Dl 1-1607
MY SONG
Pearl Halter (Paris)
Why is the Garden of Eden
cloaked in mystery,
and the sorrow of the earth
so starkly naked?
The smile of a child planted a seed.
I plowed and watered the ground
so that a green dream would grow
and cradle my anguish.
But a storm wind came,
swept the dream away,
and left a sadness in my song.
Holiday Good Cheer
COCOANUT
GROVE CAFE
Specializing in Cantonese Food -
Take-Out Service
7638 Woodward TR 5-3191
1 Block from New Center Bldg.
New Year's Greetings from
REAUME & DODDS, INC.
REALTORS
965-4455
APARTMENT AND COMMERCIAL MORTGAGES
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Happy Holiday
01.
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REFRIGERATION SERVICE, INC.
11111 Grand River
TE 4-5540
a
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Holiday Greetings
ROMA CAFE
Detroit's Oldest Restaurant — Air-Conditioned
Open Weekdays till 10:30 p.m., Sot., 2 a.m. Closed Sundays
3401 Riopelle, corner Erskine
TE 1-5940
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Happy New Year
ROSE-HILL BUILDERS, INC.
14201 W. 8 Mile Road
Best Wishes for a Happy New Year
To All Our Friends and Patrons
SERVICE OFFICE SUPPLY CO., Inc.
3511 West Fort Street
-
TA 6-6600
The sun sets in the evening
in the glaze of morning.
A child in thought
masks the wisdom of elders.
Holiday Good Cheer
An old man in repose
is blissful as a child.
Heat and frost at the highest degree—
burn alike.
The sun makes trees grew,
and fells them in the end.
Greetings
on the New Year
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
SHAW & SLAVSKY, NC.
13821 Elmira
Detroit, Michigan
AN EVENING AT HOME
Zisha Landau
You sit at the window and stare out
into the stars.
Behind you by the light your wife
knits, or sews,
or only toys with needle and thread,
and ponders the incidents that passed.
You wonder why you cannot break
the tedium encircling you,
the spell of dreams unmaterialized.
Your wife looks up, smiles.
You catch her eyes—
and all becomes clear in a flash.
You rise, walk over,
place a gentle hand on her shoulder,
and with the other you stroke her hair.
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Happy Holiday
SOBERMAN & MILGROM
{Manufacturer of Mercury Paints
7741 Lyndon Ave.
UN 4-7530
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