Steven kleinman MHDC April 2009

The other night we had our third Writing Group.  It was very small as most of the regulars had to cancel for differing reasons.  Bummer.  Hopefully with more work we'll get a larger crowd next month as this is one of my favorite events.  Anyway, Allan Scott came out from MHSS and while the two of us were left to our own devices, we had this wonderful conversation about being a Jewish writer, Jewish writing, and writing around the Holocaust.  There were lots of great things talked about, but I don't want to misrepresent Allan or our time together so I will just send out some highlights just in case anyone is interested in reading some wonderful poems surrounding being Jewish post Holocaust. 

The best of the poems as far as I'm concerned is "In the Midst of life" by Tadeusz Rozewicz. Others include just about everything from Paul Celan, "After Auschwitz" by C.K. Williams, lots of poems by Czeslaw Milosz but in particular there is a poem where he stares into a gheto as a small child.  It's a wonderful poem.  Google that.  And I guess that was mostly what we talked about as far as poems surrounding issues of moving past the Holocaust, but now that I'm thinking about it Steve Olsen has a great book about being a Jewish American, and Ilya Kaminsky wrote a wonderfull book on being a Ukranian Jew during the fall of the Soviet Union.  Hope you have a chance to check out any of these poems.