Elaine Denholtz, author of seven non-fiction books, says she worked far longer on her latest book, The Zaddik, than on any previous work because she found the story so riveting and complicated. The New Jersey author spent six years working on the book, which recounts the true story of a 13-year-old boy in New York…
Obit: Miriam Waddington (2004)
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To the many friends and critics who feel that Canadian-Jewish poet and writer Miriam Waddington did not get the recognition she deserved in life, her recent death in Vancouver seems especially sad and ironic because it occurred only weeks before she would have gained what may very well be her largest popular reading audience and…
Sugarman’s Forms of Gone
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Toronto-born poet Yerra Sugarman has won a prestigious American literary award for a debut collection of poems, Forms of Gone, that captures the experience of being a daughter of Holocaust survivors growing up in a survivor community in north Toronto. A university instructor who has lived in New York for more than 20 years, Sugarman…
Simchovitch’s Fiery Mountain
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Readers of the Yiddish Forward may have noticed several published notices in the New York-based newspaper a while ago congratulating Toronto poet and writer Simcha (Sam) Simchovitch for passing the milestone of his 85th birthday. Simchovitch is known as one of Canada’s senior Yiddish writers, yet he’s also achieved recognition for his literary contributions in…
Two by Sherman: Clusters and The Well
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The author of nine books of poetry including the recent Clusters, Kenneth Sherman has received considerable critical recognition, yet he acknowledges he still labors in relative obscurity in an age when the public has lost much of its passion for poetry. The Toronto writer teaches English composition at Sheridan College and creative writing at York…
Libby Scheier’s “seething inferno of words”
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In “Why Poems Should Not Be Fictions,” one of the pieces in Libby Scheier’s Kaddish For My Father: New and Selected Poems, 1970-1999 (ECW Press, 1999), the Toronto poet seems to imply that there’s already too much artifice in the world and that the poet should perform her art unmasked, without resorting to a narrative…
Mayne’s September Rain
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One needs a “strong sense of perseverance” to be a poet, says Seymour Mayne, the Ottawa professor and wordsmith whose recent slim volume September Rain (Mosaic Press) is the 29th book of poetry he’s published since 1964 — “ken eina hora, almost 41 years ago.” Educated at the Talmud Torah in his native Montreal, Mayne…
God and the American Writer
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American literary critic Alfred Kazin spoke at the International Festival of Authors on the subject of his latest book, God and the American Writer (Knopf, 1997) — namely, the supreme relevance of God to public discourse in America in the last century, versus God’s supreme irrelevance to public discourse today. Whether they were believers or not,…
Harold Bloom’s Book of J
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She lived in Jerusalem almost 3,000 years ago, in the time of King Solomon and his hapless son and successor, Rehoboam. A contemporary of the historian who chronicled Solomon’s court, she wrote in the Phoenician-Old Hebrew script, probably using a reed pen on sheets of papyrus that were later glued into scrolls. Known to modern…
Surviving the Censor: The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam
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This year’s Jewish Book Fair (2006) features Toronto poet Rafi Aaron, whose few published volumes to date have traveled surprisingly far and gained impressive renown in the world. On November 12, Aaron and friends are due to present a celebration in words and music of the life and poetry of Osip Mandelstam, the legendary Russian-Jewish…
