This book begins with a silence. While Jewish American fiction has long been recognized as a fit subject for critical inquiry, Jewish American poetry has largely been overlooked. Recently, a few books have started to redress this silence, focusing on some specific Jewish American poets. However, even as these studies begin to identify specific individuals as "Jewish American poets," the field must be theorized so that we might understand this fascinating occlusion. Poetic forms need to be identified; and the material difference of Jewish cultural practice must be taken into account. Taking a...

This book has two main subjects which are interwoven: the attitudes of selected poets (including Neruda, Rilke, Breton, Celan, and Artaud) to the "primitive" and the "archaic," studied from an anthropologist's viewpoint; and a model of the processes whereby poetry is produced and received, built on the author's successful careers as both poet and anthropologist. The book includes detailed biographical information about how Tarn went from being a French to an English to an American poet. It also reveals the effect of a double career and of these moves on a unique body of poetry and theoretical...

This book has two main subjects which are interwoven: the attitudes of selected poets (including Neruda, Rilke, Breton, Celan, and Artaud) to the "primitive" and the "archaic," studied from an anthropologist's viewpoint; and a model of the processes whereby poetry is produced and received, built on the author's successful careers as both poet and anthropologist. The book includes detailed biographical information about how Tarn went from being a French to an English to an American poet. It also reveals the effect of a double career and of these moves on a unique body of poetry and theoretical...

Poetic Affairs deals with the complex and fascinating interface between literature and life through the prism of the lives and works of three outstanding poets: the German-Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan (1920-1970); the Leningrad native, U.S. poet laureate, and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996); and Germany's premier contemporary poet, Durs Grunbein (born 1962). Focusing on their poetic dialogues with such interlocutors as Shakespeare, Seneca, and Byron, respectively--veritable love affairs unfolding in and through poetry--Eskin offers unprecedented...