Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021

Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021

by Irena Klepfisz
Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021

Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021

by Irena Klepfisz

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Overview

Collected poems of pivotal Jewish lesbian activist

Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry (2023)
Finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, Berru Award for Poetry, in memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash (2022)


A trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist whose work is deeply informed by socialist values, Irena Klepfisz is a vital and individual American voice. This book is the first complete collection of her work. For fifty years, Klepfisz has written powerful, searching poems about relatives murdered during the war, recent immigrants, a lost Yiddish writer, a Palestinian boy in Gaza, and various people in her life. In her introduction to Klepfisz's A Few Words in the Mother Tongue, Adrienne Rich wrote: "[Klepfisz's] sense of phrase, of line, of the shift of tone, is almost flawless." Her Birth and Later Years was a Finalist for the Jewish Book Award and winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780819501080
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Publication date: 01/09/2024
Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

IRENA KLEPFISZ (Brooklyn, NY) taught Jewish Women's Studies at Barnard College for 22 years. She is the author of four books of poetry including Periods of Stress, Keeper of Accounts, Different Enclosures, A Few Words in the Mother Tongue, and a collection of essays Dreams of an Insomniac. She was co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology. An advocate of the Yiddish language and active in its renaissance in the United States, she has published poetry and essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, Tablet Magazine, In Geveb, Sinister Wisdom, The Manhattan Review, Conditions, The Georgia Review and Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures. Her Birth and Later Years was a Finalist for the Jewish Book Award and winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry.

Table of Contents

Early Work (1971)

Searching for my Father's Body 3

The Widow and Daughter 7

From periods of stress (1975)

I

During the war 13

P o w s 14

Herr captain 15

Death camp 17

About my father 18

Perspectives on the second world war 19

II

Conditions 22

Periods of stress 24

Please don't touch me 25

Dinosaurs and larger issues 27

When the heart fails 34

It was good 36

Flesh is cold 36

They're always curious 37

They did not build wings for them 38

The fish 41

III

In between 44

The house 45

Blending 48

Edges 49

IV

Aesthetic distance 56

Self-dialogues 57

Two Sisters: Helen and Eva Hesse (1978)

An Introduction 63

Two Sisters: A Monologue 65

Keeper of Accounts (1982)

I From the Monkey House and Other Cages

Monkey 1 76

Monkey 2 87

II Different Enclosures

Contexts 98

Work Sonnets/with Notes and a Monolgue about a Dialogue

I Work Sonnets 104

II Notes 113

III A Monologue about a Dialogue 115

A Poem for Judy/beginning a new job 118

III Urban Flowers

Mnemonic Devices: Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, 1981 122

Royal Pearl 124

Lithops 125

Aesthetics 126

Winter Light 127

Oleander 128

Cactus 129

Abutilon in Bloom 130

IV Inhospitable Soil

Glimpses of the Outside

A place 132

A visit 136

A place in time 140

Mourning 143

Bashert

These words are dedicated to those who died 145

These words are dedicated to those who survived 147

1 Poland, 1944: My mother is walking down a road 148

2 Chicago, 1964: I am walking home alone at midnight 150

3 Brooklyn, 1971: I am almost equidistant from two continents 153

4 Cherry Plain, 1981: I have become a keeper of accounts 156

Solitary Acts 159

A Few Words in the Mother Tongue (1983-1990)

I cannot swim 171

Di rayze aheym/The journey home

1 Der fentster/The window 174

2 Vider a mol/Once again 175

3 Zi flit/She flies 176

4 A beys-oylem/A cemetery 177

5 Kashes/Questions 178

6 Zi shemt zihk/She is ashamed 179

7 In der fremd/Among strangers 180

8 Di tsung/The tongue 181

9 Di rayze aheym/The journey home 182

Etlekhe verier oyf mame-loshn/A few words in the mother tongue 183

Fradel Schtok 186

Der mames shabosim/My Mother's Sabbath Days 188

'67 Remembered 190

Warsaw, 1983: Umschlagplatz 193

East Jerusalem, 1987: Bet Shalom (House of Peace) 195

Her Birth and Later Years (1990-2021)

Footnotes

March 1939: Warsaw, Poland 202

Warsaw, 1941: The story of her birth 204

Pesakh: Reynolda Gardens, Winston-Salem

1 Winter 210

2 Spring 211

3 The seder table 212

Mitsrayim: Goat Dream 213

Der soyne/The Enemy: An Interview in Gaza 216

In memory of Razan al-Najjar 217

Instructions of the dying elder … 221

Dearest Friend: Regarding Esther Frumkin 224

Millet's Flight of Crows

Five ways to view a drawing 228

Mourning Cycle

Parsing the question 234

This House 235

Liberation of the roses 237

Trees 238

Wound: a memory 239

Wind chime 240

Grief changes and doesn't 241

Entering the stream 242

Between shadow and night: a treatise on loneliness 243

And Death Is Always with Us

For Jean Swallow: whom I barely knew 250

My mother at 99: Looking for home 253

My mother's loveseat 255

July 22: Geology 256

Jamaica Wildlife Preserve: September 258

From The old poet cycle

The old poet reconsiders acting 260

The old poet tries unsuccessfully to bring chaos back into her order 262

The old poet and Orion 263

The old poet's become tired 264

The old poet remembers the immigrant girl 265

Grief: Brunswick Public Library Maine 267

Der fremder in derfremd 269

Acknowledgments 271

Glossary 273

Notes 275

Index of titles 277

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In terrible times poetry comforts, challenges, and sustains. Irena Klepfisz has been doing all these through the decades. With this book she gives us an enormous measure of grace. It is evidence of the work done to change the world—a vision of and commitment to justice in the largest sense. We are fortunate, all of us, to have it."—Dorothy Allison, author of Cavedweller

"This book is an absolute treasure for the readers of Irena Klepfisz, for readers of poetry, lesbian literature, and/or Jewish literature...The poet's voice simultaneously transcends time and is also deeply embedded within it."—Zohar Weiman-Kelman, author of Queer Expectations: A Genealogy of Jewish Women's Poetry

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