Thursday, September 12, 2019

Poems 1918-1975, The Collected Poems of Charles Reznikoff edt. Seamus Cooney

Poems 1918-1975, The Collected Poems of Charles Reznikoff edt. Seamus Cooney 

This collection has all of Reznikoff’s shorter poems (excluding Holocaust and Testimony) it is amazing to see the stylistic changed over the course of a poets life. Themes include, NYC, immigration, European Jewish experience (in Europe and the US), religion, life, memory, landscape, cityscape. Reznikoff loved his long narrative poems! The poems take on history, rewriting oral and written Jewish tradition. 

In addition to the content, there are careful textual notes and notes about each collection. Cooney was clearly very serious about his research Reznikoff’s published and unpublished work. The level of detail around textual variation, sources, notes is fantastic.







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