Poem | A Jew in 2019
No matter how many generations / our forebears lived in a country / we are always seen by many / as those who can’t belong
No matter how many generations / our forebears lived in a country / we are always seen by many / as those who can’t belong
Marge Piercy doesn’t live that far off the beaten track—it’s only Cape Cod, after all—but it feels remote, especially in the off-season. The poet, novelist and longtime feminist activist, who’s now 83, has lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, since the 1970s.
At 88 years old, Viorst doesn’t fail to remind us how fiercely funny she is in her appropriately titled poetry collection: Nearing 90 and Other Comedies of Late Life.
The day you left was the Ninth of Av, / a day of grief, the Temple destroyed.
Until the 1980s, women were a small minority among Hebrew writers. There was Russian-born Rahel Bluwstein (1890–1931), considered the “founding mother” of modern Hebrew poetry by women. Esther Raab (1894–1981) was the first native-born Israeli woman poet, principally known for her rich use of modern Hebrew.
In effect, perhaps without him even realizing it, Shimon Peres both spoke and wrote in parallelism.
Moshe Dor (1932-2016) was a major figure in contemporary Israeli literature. A lyric poet par excellence, his subject was love.
There have been Jewish American poets for about as long as there has been American poetry.