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The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language

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This issue of TMR is devoted to Menke, translations by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav of the Yiddish poems of the bilingual poet Menke Katz (1906-1991) with a monographic introduction by the poet's son Dovid Katz. The poems are described in general terms, briefly illustrated, and a central issue of the Introduction is discussed.  

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Date: 1 July 2005   
From: Leonard Prager
Subject:  A Review of Menke: The Complete Yiddish Poems

Menke;  The Complete Yiddish Poems of Menke Katz, translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, Edited by Dovid Katz and Harry Smith. Brooklyn, New York: The Smith, 2005. [ISBN: 1-882986-21-0]

A Substantial Volume

Menke richly portrays the life of the exuberant Menke Katz (1906-1991), one of the few Yiddish poets in America who published in English (appearing in Atlantic, New York Times, Poet Lore , Poetry, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere).  The main body of Menke's 779 pages provides English translations by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav of virtually the entire published corpus of Menke Katz's Yiddish verse. To contextualize this mass of  poems and illuminate the period, the milieu, the familial and personal background, the poet's son, Dovid Katz, has written a comprehensive 122-page biographical, critical and personal introduction. There is also a preface from publisher Harry Smith, a lifelong friend and collaborator of the poet and an intriguing free spirit in his own right.  Smith and Katz edited the book, reviewing "every line together" (p. xi) and the translators worked on the poems "over a period covering most of the 1990s" (p. xi).

Family Saga, Epic of Places and Ode to Yiddish

Menke is a family saga: "I love so much my mother's hearty laughter." (p.531)  "Father, in that old house of yours, you became a legend of Svir. We five children are hushed in fear of your quieted voice." (p. 552) "Rivke, radiant girl of the gray Boro Park streets" [his wife, p. 614], "Troim, girl of the Williamsburg backyards" [his daughter, p 620]. And, especially, the entire volume of 1939: Grandmother Mona Takes the Floor (pp. 403-451).

Menke is an epic of places, a kind of versified yisker-bukh (memorial book), especially of the magical shtetl of Michaleshik (now in Belarus), where the poet spent part of his childhood and the town of Svintsyan (now in Lithuania), where he was born. A concordance of Menke Katz's poems would show hundreds of instances where these storied names are invoked, carrying a dense array of symbolic meaning as well as of nostalgia.

Bridging epic and saga, Menke is an impassioned ode to Yiddish, to yidish koydesh, a central leitmotif in the poet's entire work and title of a group of poems in the volume from the 1947 Der posheter kholem (The Simple Dream). Here in a poem called "Michaleshik" we meet the poet's fervent belief in the power of Yiddish to resurrect itself. The poem ends on the line: "Mit ale kheynen fun mame-loshn nThe Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Languages n l Ladies Ladies x Pic Pic iThe Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Languageu r Sexy Ladies Ladies