Wallace Stevens' "dark rabbi," from his poem "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle," provides a title for this collection of essays on the "lordly study" of modern Jewish poetry in English. Including chapters on such poets as Charles Reznikoff, Allen Grossman, Chana Bloch, and Michael Heller, this volume explores the tensions between religious and secular worldviews in recent Jewish poetry, the often conflicted linguistic and cultural matrix from which this poetry arises, and the complicated ways in which Jewish tradition shapes the sensibilities of not only Jewish, but also non-Jewish, poets. Finkelstein, described as "one of American poetry's indispensible makers" (Lawrence Joseph), whose previous critical work has been called "the exemplary study of the religious aspect of the works of contemporary American poets" (Peter O'Leary), considers large literary and cultural trends while never losing sight of the particular formal powers of individual poems. In Like a Dark Rabbi he offers a passionate argument for the importance of Jewish-American poetry to modern Jewish culture-and to American poetry-as it engages with the contradictions of contemporary life.



by Norman Finkelstein



Preface 1. Introduction: Two Shapiros: Thoughts On Poetry and Secular Jewish Culture 2. Ghosts of Yiddish or, Postvernacularity in Jewish American Poetry 3. Charles Reznikoff: Modernism, Diaspora, and the Problem of Jewish Identity 4. Allen Grossman and the Poetry of Holiness 5. Michael Heller: Between the Sacred and the Profane 6. Chana Bloch: Surfaces and Depths 7. "The darker wisdom of the Jews": Henry Weinfield's Dialectical Irony 8. Rachel Tzvia Back: Between Israel and the Diaspora 9. Dark Rabbis and Secret Jews 10. Afterword: "Diasporas of Imperfection"