Table of Contents

Note on Selection and Arrangement
Note on Translation
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Justin Cammy

From Collected Poems, Volume One (1963)

Siberia
In the Village
At Dawn
Recognition
Like a Sleigh in Its Wistful Ringing
Fiery Pelt
In a Siberian Forest
To My Father
Irtysh
Snowman
Siberian Spring
Kyrgyz
My Friend Tshanguri
By a Bonfire
North Star
A Haystack
Ant Nest
Poems to a Sleepwalker
Two Bullets
In the Cell
I Lie in a Coffin
From a Lost Poem
Every Hour, Every Day
The Burial
To the Thin Vein on My Head
The Woman of Marble in Pere Lachaise

From Collected Poems, Volume Two (1963)

Deer by the Red Sea
Denkmol nokh a ferd
Blackberries
Trained Animals
A Poem without a Name
[Gather me . . .]

From Square Letters and Magical Signs (1968)

When the River Overran Its Banks
To Leivick
Poem without a Name

From Ripe Faces (1970)

Portrait
Firefighters

From The Fiddle Rose (1974)

Granite Wings
From Both Ends of the World
The Full Pomegranate
Collected Treasures
Wonder
Alto Cellos
[Here I am fated to see . . .]

From Twin Brother (1986)

[Who will last . . .]
[Good morning, woodpecker . . .]
[Fate-hairy dog . . .]
[Who blessed me . . .]
[Gone, the green . . .]
[Draw a thread . . .]
[I remember Pasternak . . .]
[And if I go . . .]
[It belongs to me . . .]
[Death redeems death . . .]
[A woman points . . .]
[My unborn heir . . .]
[Memory of three . . .]
[Good morning, young . . .]
[When your words . . .]
["How come you don't mention . . ."]
[A distant morning's . . .]
[Not even the least . . .]
[Ever since my pious mother . . .]
[Tell me, what did you want . . .]
[I am your abyss . . .]
[I read texts . . .]
[I still owe you . . .]
[The murmur-hieroglyphics . . .]
[Where are they . . .]
[Not one, not two . . .]
From In Somewhere-Night of Black Honey

From The Heir of Rain (1992)

[Two-legged grasses . . .]
Like Sun through a Crevice
Poem about Nothing
I Seek Those Few People Who to This Day Remember My Mother
[Soon it will happen!]

From Shaken Walls (1996)

[Just before his bar mitzvah . . .]
[A special announcement . . .]
[It sometimes seems to me . . .]
[All that is past . . .]
[I know that nothing remains . . .]
[I regret that I was born . . .]

Sporadic visitant . . .
Richard J. Fein

Afterword
Notes

About the Author

Richard J. Fein is Professor Emeritus of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the author, editor, and translator of many books, including With Everything We've Got: A Personal Anthology of Yiddish Poetry.

Reviews

"...a rich and daring cross-section of Sutzkever's verse ... Fein crafts a portrait of Sutzkever neither as a historical relic nor as a witness to catastrophe, but as an inexhaustibly accomplished creator of poetry, and a devoted imaginer of a lost world. This, one imagines, is what Sutzkever would have wanted." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"A remarkable aspect of this volume is its breadth. It allows readers to note how Sutzkever's images transformed and reappeared over the course of his fifty-year career." - In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies

"...represent[s] important contributions to the growth of a great, neglected poet's reputation in the English-speaking world..." - Times Literary Supplement

"Richard Fein is among the best translators of Yiddish poetry into English-the best now, and, for that matter, among the best ever. He has a deep, inward sense of Yiddish poems, both intuitive and analytic, and a patient tenacity in burrowing into them. He also has what is still rarer, a beautifully fine ear for diction and rhythm; the translations are alive on the page, every word is necessary, every cadence has its music.

"The poems of Avrom Sutzkever were a challenge to him; he writes, candidly, 'they wanted me to find new powers in my English.' There is a special, precious audacity in accepting such a challenge, and Fein has indeed found the new powers the poems demanded." - Lawrence Rosenwald, Wellesley College

"Avrom Sutzkever has no more loving translator than fellow poet Richard Fein. Even those who think they 'do not understand poetry' will be inspired by the poet who bore witness to the most dramatic points of modern Jewish experience and could transmit their power. Strength and spirit fuse in Sutzkever, wit and insight, moral confidence and grace. Our thanks to the translator and to Justin Cammy's introduction for bringing this Jewish cultural landmark to English readers." - Ruth R. Wisse, author of No Joke: Making Jewish Humor

"Richard Fein's translations strive for the impossible acrobatics of Sutzkever's writing, from the rare alchemy of his striking metaphors to a postwar longing for poetic redemption in the face of destruction. To capture just an echo of Sutzkever's singular voice would be an achievement. This collection, simultaneously careful and daring in its choices, amplifies that echo to the maximum that the English language would allow." - Saul Noam Zaritt, Harvard University

"In dialogue with Avrom Sutzkever, Richard Fein offers us a vibrant selection of the poet's works in a beautiful facing-page translation. Sutzkever's superbly inventive Yiddish imagery and wordcraft inspired Fein, the poet-translator, to dynamically engage both Yiddish and English, with remarkable and moving results." - Ellen Kellman, Brandeis University