What do you think?
Rate this book
In New York: A Selection (Jewish Poetry Series)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 31, 2013
I recently found a book (in English) by this Yiddish poet (1886-1932). He wrote about New York in the time of immigration, neon, the El and its noise and grit, poverty, ragtime, the heat of August sticking to the body at manual labor. An immigrant, Halpern contrasts the small Polish town and the Lower East Side with images as powerful as Pound's, and as precise.
But he also writes a long night dream that surrounds the entire history of his people, and his relatives, with the personal mystery of his own existence: "A Night." Eastrn European immigrants experienced Two kinds of communities, one small, contained, God-centered,where everyone knew everyone, the shtetl. Its replacement, after days in steerage stink, was the American Dream and the reality of pragmatic sink-or-swim in the most crowded, and thus unhealthy, section of the modern Babylon, New York, and its promise of equality, privacy, happiness.
There is a unique force of history in these poems. His voice is Modernist, somewhat like Joyce's voice, but from the wandering, lonely, Jew's angle of sight: "A shout in the street. A nightmare from which I am struggling to awake."
If Halpern had lived his life in Galicia, he would have been a great scholar, but not an American poet inspired by depicting what was left of humanity after fear of God was evaporating into the sultry air of sink or swim.
"[The little man] bows deeper to the glittering machine.
Will he tear his hands with his own nails?
(A condemned man will try to gnaw through his prison bars)."
But hand in hand with devotion in old Poland went ignorance of individual potential, and strict limits set on wishes, desires, and sensual enjoyments by the old world Rabbis and their interpretations of Talmud. They were painstakingly made in years of sitting and debating in freezing or sweltering study houses. Which they heroically continued to do, even as their fellow villagers left for America, WWI stamped out their shtetl's life, and the Nazis came for them, tearing prayer shawls and phylacteries from shoulders and foreheads. Halpern's "A night" is an epic poem about the history of the Jews. And it is the opposite of the cheap sentiment we hear too much of today.
"My heart cries with joy, and glows.
My heart cries and sings, dreaming
In the shadow of my tree.
The chain spins, winding
Seven times around my arm.
The sun surrenders its life, and night descends."
But he also writes a long night dream that surrounds the entire history of his people, and his relatives, with the personal mystery of his own existence: "A Night." Eastrn European immigrants experienced Two kinds of communities, one small, contained, God-centered,where everyone knew everyone, the shtetl. Its replacement, after days in steerage stink, was the American Dream and the reality of pragmatic sink-or-swim in the most crowded, and thus unhealthy, section of the modern Babylon, New York, and its promise of equality, privacy, happiness.
There is a unique force of history in these poems. His voice is Modernist, somewhat like Joyce's voice, but from the wandering, lonely, Jew's angle of sight: "A shout in the street. A nightmare from which I am struggling to awake."
If Halpern had lived his life in Galicia, he would have been a great scholar, but not an American poet inspired by depicting what was left of humanity after fear of God was evaporating into the sultry air of sink or swim.
"[The little man] bows deeper to the glittering machine.
Will he tear his hands with his own nails?
(A condemned man will try to gnaw through his prison bars)."
But hand in hand with devotion in old Poland went ignorance of individual potential, and strict limits set on wishes, desires, and sensual enjoyments by the old world Rabbis and their interpretations of Talmud. They were painstakingly made in years of sitting and debating in freezing or sweltering study houses. Which they heroically continued to do, even as their fellow villagers left for America, WWI stamped out their shtetl's life, and the Nazis came for them, tearing prayer shawls and phylacteries from shoulders and foreheads. Halpern's "A night" is an epic poem about the history of the Jews. And it is the opposite of the cheap sentiment we hear too much of today.
"My heart cries with joy, and glows.
My heart cries and sings, dreaming
In the shadow of my tree.
The chain spins, winding
Seven times around my arm.
The sun surrenders its life, and night descends."
Displaying 1 of 1 review