January 2: Will They Believe Moyshe-Leyb?

Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, one of the most original Yiddish poets of the 20th century, was born in Poland on this date in 1886. Halpern was a key member of Di Yunge (“the Young Ones”), a community of modernist poets who were more psychological, introspective, and apolitical than their elders. He was also a painter, working mostly on cheap, easily available materials like muslin, cardboard, wooden bowls, shirt collars, and furniture. His poetry, too, was down-to-earth: “the distinctive quality of his poems,” writes Julian Levinson, “depends upon Halpern’s constant undercutting of poetic convention and the reader’s expectation.”

“And if Moyshe-Leyb swears with tear/that Death attracts him, draws him in/like a man full of longing, drawn in the evening/to the window of one of his adored women — Will they believe this from Moyshe-Leyb?”

—Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, “Memento Mori,”
translated by Kathryn Hellerstein