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Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish American Identity
Not One of Them in Place is the first book to examine the ways in which Jewish belief, thought, and culture have been shaped and articulated in modern American poetry. Based on the idea that recent American poetry has gravitated between two traditions—romantic and symbolist on the one hand, modernist and objectivist on the other—Norman Finkelstein provides a theoretical framework for reading the Jewish-American canon, as well as close readings of well known and less established poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky, Harvey Shapiro, Armand Schwerner, Hugh Seidman, and Michael Heller. Not One of Them in Place presents this poetry in a clear and nuanced style, paying equal attention to its historical and its aesthetic dimensions.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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March 26, 2024
Technicians Of The Sacred
The poetry written by Twentieth Century American Jews has recently received substantial critical attention. In 1976, Harold Bloom wrote an influential article, "The Sorrows of American-Jewish Poetry" critical of the work of American Jewish poets, such as Charles Reznikoff, for failing to keep alive in their writings the prophetic, moral character of the Jewish Scriptures. In 1997, Steve Rubin edited an anthology, "Telling and Remembering", containing selections from over thirty Jewish-American poets.
With this as a background, Finklestein's book attempts to determine what in American Jewish poetry is significant and why it is so. He tries to select a number of writers illustrating important trends in Jewish-American poetry and to explain their significance.
The result is a challenging book, in places as difficult to follow as some of the poets it discusses, but one that can bring focus to reading. In my case, the book introduced me to poets I hadn't known about before.
Finklestein divides Jewish poets into to groups which basically fall within the broad divide of Twentieth Century American poetry: the objectivists and the symbolists. The leading objectivist poets are Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky and their late Twentieth Century successors. Their writing is spare and fact-based. As far as Jewish content is concerned, the attitude towards Jewish tradition becomes one primarily of history -- with a loss of traditional religious belief -- and an attempt to make something of this history in one's life as an American.
The "symbolist" school is an attempt to continue the romantic tradition in poetry, with ancestors in Blake, Whitman, and, in the Twentieth Century Wallace Stevens. Finklestein discusses Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish" as the representative poem of this movement, even though Ginsberg has strong objectivist components as well, and even though Ginsberg left Judaism and disclaimed any ties to it. Finklestein also discusses the religious poetry of Alan Grossman and the "Ethnopoetics" of Jerome Rothenberg. Grossman, in particular, he sees as attempting to bring back a religious dimension to poetry and to American Jewish life.
As Finklestein recognizes, generalizations are treacherous. It is difficult to separate issues particular to Jewish-American poetry from broader issues common to American or contemporary poetry or to isolate issues as particularly bearing upon Jewish-American writers. In broad terms, though, he finds the writers he discusses have a sense of themselves as American and yet carry forward something of Jewishness. At the close of his book he alludes to a description by Jerome Rothenberg of Jewish poets as "technicians of the sacred" with one foot in modernity and secular America and the other foot in an attempt to recover something of the Divine and the Transcendent, whether this is viewed in specifically Jewish terms or not. In addition, he claims to find an underlying sense of affirming the value of life in the poetry.
There is a rich body of work produced by Twentieth Century American poets that remains to be discovered. The work of Jewish Americans forms part of this work. Some of the writers discussed in this book may be obscure, but the book will encourage the reader to explore further the canon of American-Jewish poetry.
Robin Friedman
The poetry written by Twentieth Century American Jews has recently received substantial critical attention. In 1976, Harold Bloom wrote an influential article, "The Sorrows of American-Jewish Poetry" critical of the work of American Jewish poets, such as Charles Reznikoff, for failing to keep alive in their writings the prophetic, moral character of the Jewish Scriptures. In 1997, Steve Rubin edited an anthology, "Telling and Remembering", containing selections from over thirty Jewish-American poets.
With this as a background, Finklestein's book attempts to determine what in American Jewish poetry is significant and why it is so. He tries to select a number of writers illustrating important trends in Jewish-American poetry and to explain their significance.
The result is a challenging book, in places as difficult to follow as some of the poets it discusses, but one that can bring focus to reading. In my case, the book introduced me to poets I hadn't known about before.
Finklestein divides Jewish poets into to groups which basically fall within the broad divide of Twentieth Century American poetry: the objectivists and the symbolists. The leading objectivist poets are Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky and their late Twentieth Century successors. Their writing is spare and fact-based. As far as Jewish content is concerned, the attitude towards Jewish tradition becomes one primarily of history -- with a loss of traditional religious belief -- and an attempt to make something of this history in one's life as an American.
The "symbolist" school is an attempt to continue the romantic tradition in poetry, with ancestors in Blake, Whitman, and, in the Twentieth Century Wallace Stevens. Finklestein discusses Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish" as the representative poem of this movement, even though Ginsberg has strong objectivist components as well, and even though Ginsberg left Judaism and disclaimed any ties to it. Finklestein also discusses the religious poetry of Alan Grossman and the "Ethnopoetics" of Jerome Rothenberg. Grossman, in particular, he sees as attempting to bring back a religious dimension to poetry and to American Jewish life.
As Finklestein recognizes, generalizations are treacherous. It is difficult to separate issues particular to Jewish-American poetry from broader issues common to American or contemporary poetry or to isolate issues as particularly bearing upon Jewish-American writers. In broad terms, though, he finds the writers he discusses have a sense of themselves as American and yet carry forward something of Jewishness. At the close of his book he alludes to a description by Jerome Rothenberg of Jewish poets as "technicians of the sacred" with one foot in modernity and secular America and the other foot in an attempt to recover something of the Divine and the Transcendent, whether this is viewed in specifically Jewish terms or not. In addition, he claims to find an underlying sense of affirming the value of life in the poetry.
There is a rich body of work produced by Twentieth Century American poets that remains to be discovered. The work of Jewish Americans forms part of this work. Some of the writers discussed in this book may be obscure, but the book will encourage the reader to explore further the canon of American-Jewish poetry.
Robin Friedman
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