Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice

Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 -- 7pm
Center for Jewish History/American Jewish Historical Society
15 West 16th Street, Manhattan

A public forum with Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein (chair), Kathryn Hellerstein, Stephen Paul Miller, Marjorie Perloff, Jerome Rothenberg

What are the innovations and inventions of American Jewish poets, over the past century? Can we say that there is a distinctly Jewish component to radical modernist and contemporary poetry? What is the relation of Jewish modernist and contemporary poets to the historical avant-garde and to contemporary innovative poetry? How does Jewish cultural life and ethnic and religious forms and traditions manifest themselves in the forms, styles, and approaches to radical American poetry? What role does a distinctly secular approach to Jewishness by poets and other Jewish artists mean for "radical Jewish culture"?

Paul Auster, a critically acclaimed writer both here and abroad, his most recent books are Oracle Night and Collected Poems. His film credits include Smoke, Blue in the Face, and Pandora’s Box.

Charles Bernstein, panel organizer, is the author of over twenty books of poetry and criticism, including With Strings and My Way: Speeches and Poems. He is Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kathryn Hellerstein is the Ruth Meltzer Senior Lecturer in Yiddish and Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Hellerstein is a translator and scholar of Yiddish poetry and a major contributor to American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology.

Marjorie Perloff is Professor of English at Stanford University, Emerita. Ms. Perloff was the President of the Modern Language Association. Recognized as one of the most respected and influential critics of modernist and contemporary American poetry, she has just published The Vienna Paradox, her memoir of Vienna, the Anschluss and coming to America.

Jerome Rothenberg is the author of over sixty books of poetry including Khurbn and Poland/1931 and the editor of one of the most important anthologies of Jewish writings, A Big Jewish Book (or, the abridged version, Exiled in the Word). Mr. Rothenberg is also the editor of a two-volume global anthology of 20th century poetry, Poems for the Millenium (co-edited with Pierre Joris).

Stephen Paul Miller is the author of The Seventies Now and Art is Boring for the Same Reason We Stayed Out of Vietnam. Mr. Miller is the co-editor of The Scene of My Selves: New Work on the New York School Poets. Miller is an Associate Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City.

Norman Fischer & Charles Bernstein
on
Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture
(University of Alabama Press, 2009)
a conversation at
The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
May 11, 2010
co-sponsored by Small Press Traffic
full program (1:18:47): MP3
edited podcast (55:49): MP3