by admin on February 22, 2012
by Jules Chametzky
In 1957, living in Cambridge, Massachusetts while working at Boston University, I took a summer course in Greek at Harvard, so that I could use the Widener Library the rest of the year and finish my dissertation. Next door to my class an eminent Classics professor named Cedric Whitman was teaching. That induced me to attend a poetry reading by Ruth Whitman, who had been married to him and bore his name, but, as it turned out when we met and talked, was now married to Firman Houghton (of the Houghton-Mifflin connection), with whom she was running a small literary magazine. I only learned she was Jewish when in 1966 I reviewed a volume of her translations of Yiddish poetry — which, in my view, she did very well — in the Nation. She was by then no longer with Houghton. [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on February 19, 2012
Adrienne Cooper (September 1, 1946 –December 25, 2011), a vibrant performer and scholar of Yiddish song and Yiddish culture who was a member of our magazine’s Editorial Board, was memorialized on January 1st of this year at Ansche Chesed in New York. The following excerpts from her memorial service were captured by Helen Engelhardt on tape and are narrated by her.
Those of us who came to mourn Adrienne’s sudden, untimely death were handed a program that would have been appropriate for one of her concerts. I expected her memorial service would be filled with music and tributes from friends and family — and it was — but it was uniquely organized, thematically, with songs and poetry.
The first four people who spoke were Rabbi Jeffrey Kalmanofsky of Ansche Chesed, Jeffrey Shandler, Sophia Gutherz and Sam Norich. “Not surprisingly, we’re going to begin musically,” Rabbi Kalmanofsky said, and the line of musicians and singers began singing as they walked from their seats, softly as though from a great distance, growing louder as they approached the microphone and as we joined them, [click to continue…]
by admin on January 31, 2012
Allen Ginsberg was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in February, 1973 — and made his last public appearance as a special guest at the NYU Poetry Slam on February 20, 1997. We honor this pioneering poet and activist with this 1st of February remembrance.
by Jules Chametzky Drawing by Marty Carey
One of the smartest co-editors of the Norton Anthology, John Felstiner, ends his lengthily astute introduction to Ginsberg and his place in Jewish American letters with quotes from Harold Bloom (negative: reading “Kaddish” is like being forced to “watch the hysteria of strangers”), and Saul Bellow (positive: “Under all the self-revealing candor is purity of heart”). Felstiner concedes that Ginsberg changed “the face of American poetry,” but adds that the word for him is khutspe. I go along with Bellow: candor, and heart. “Howl” was the great breakthrough work of our generation, and “Kaddish,” for his mother who died in an insane asylum, is his Jewish declaration of love for her, warts and all, and of his heartbreak. [click to continue…]
by admin on January 17, 2012
With a new documentary film, Paul Goodman Changed My Life (www.paulgoodmanfilm.com), making the rounds of small movie theaters, we present this memoir of Goodman by Jules Chametzky.
by Jules Chametzky
Peter Rose, a long-time professor of sociology at Smith College, and I spent a good hour walking the streets of Northampton on a bitter cold winter evening in the late 1960s with Paul Goodman, who had spoken earlier at the college. A slight figure, he was wearing what we used to call a “pupke” hat — woolen, with a small ball of wool on top — pulled over his ears. He was hunched over against the cold, his nose running a little, until we ended up talking for hours at a scruffy old-time diner.
What I remember most is his comparing New York Puerto Ricans with the city’s Blacks. A frequent player of playground handball, that grand city game, he noted that when a ball went astray the Puerto Rican kids would stop it and return it to the players; the Black kids simply let it go by them. As an occasional volunteer worker in the city hospitals, he also observed that Black patients were often alone, occasionally visited by one family member. The Puerto Ricans were usually surrounded by family, bearing food, drinks, flowers; if one of them opened a bodega or other small business, in the city or in its suburbs, family and friends rallied around, at least for a while, as customers or supporters. [click to continue…]
