Listening to the Other
Versions of Yiddish, Vietnamese, and Aztec Poetry
by
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What Whitman's work was read extensively by Yiddish writers as soon as it has been translated from English to Yiddish in the late 1900s. Consequently, when Yiddish poets arrived in America they used Walt Whitman's poetry and autobiographical material as a guiding inspiration. They heeded Whitman's dictum that the purpose of poetic imagination was to give "ultimate vivification" to one's surrounding reality, endowing it with "the glows and glories and fine illustriousness which belong to every real thing, and to real things only." They also followed Whitman's advice that poetic style and content should celebrate the energies of everyday American life. And in early-to-mid twentieth-century America nothing in music was more "real" or more energetic than Jazz.
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About the Book
In this work, the author makes it a point to try to connect meaningfully and purposefully with the “other”—whether that “other” is a Yiddish jazz poet, a Vietnamese poet-educator, or an anonymous Aztec singer of songs. Since poetry is a genre with which the author feels quite comfortable, he deliberately uses translated verse as a means of connecting with each of the poets from the three different cultures mentioned above.
About the Author
Martin Wasserman is a professor emeritus at SUNY Adirondack, a college in the State University of New York System, where he taught for thirty-six years. During his career, he published over thirty journal articles and three books. One of those works, Kafka Kaleidoscope, was chosen as “Best Book” by the Small Press Review in 1999.