Product Description

In Firebird, Mark Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy" by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, "Son, you're a boy!"

Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is the Wrong One. A self-confessed "chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent," Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America-from Tennessee to Arizona, Florida to California. A lyrical, heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, a comic tour of American suburban life, and a testament to the transformative power of art.

Customer Reviews (13)

An Identity Emerges through Art
As you read Mark Doty's memoir, you may wish you could reach back though the decades to the 1950's to let this sensitive, awkward, and talented gay boy know that he would some day find himself. Knowing you can't reach back, you watch the story unfold on its own and almost hold your breath lest he succumb to the stifling forces of that era.

Doty is the son of an artistic mother--who was also a tragic alcoholic--and an engineer father who moved the family often from job to job. Doty was often lonely and ostracized and filled with shame that he was somehow different. In that cultural milieu--before the internet and media exposure that we now take for granted--there was almost no context for an emerging gay identity. And Doty clearly suffered from that drought. He was always trying to find and sustain himself in this arid landscape.

What saved him was art. Throughout his childhood, just enough light and air was able to penetrate through art to keep him alive, starting with his mother's artistic pursuits, and continuing with the encouragement of a charismatic elementary school teacher, Miss Tynes, and, later, the mentoring of a poet, Richard Shelton, who taught at a university.

This is not to say that his survival was a foregone conclusion. Doty endured a suicide attempt and an apparent assault by his mother who once pointed a gun at him but could not remove the safety to get it to fire. Still, it is a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit that he could turn these encounters with art into a lifeline.

Toward the end of this memoir, we know that Doty has emerged on the other side, but not without collateral damage. He invested nine years in a marriage to a woman before he was willing to pursue his gay identify. He recalls a visit with his father and new stepmother (his own mother had died of alcoholism) and his then partner, Paul. While we're happy for his emergence, we know it comes with an imperfect combustion. He and his father will never be really close. His mother's half love and half loathing for him and her gruesome death cannot be undone. Like all adult stories, it is a partial victory, but one we can celebrate nonetheless.

If you are ever called to reach back in time for a self that was struggling to emerge, you will be richly rewarded by reading Doty's memoir.

A childhood survived - barely
Much has been made about being gay in various notes and reviews of this blazingly honest book. But I don't think it's quite as zeroed in on sexual preference as, say, Edmund White's autobiography,My Lives. Firebird is, first of all, a book about a very messed-up childhood with parents with plenty of problems of their own. Like a lot of other adult men - gay and straight - Doty continues to struggle with his relationship with his father. His scene of an actual physical confrontation, at the age of fourteen, with his father struck a nerve with me, as I remembered a nearly identical thing between me and my dad, also when I was about fourteen. And I remembered how frightening it was to me, at least briefly, wondering what I would do if my folks actually kicked me out. Doty was apparently cut loose by his parents, at least emotionally, at about that age, which began a lifelong period of painfully ambivalent feelings toward the two people who should have loved him most and taken care of him. I had trouble with the first part of this book, when Doty tried to tie in his looks at the perspective box and other cultural landmarks. But it all hung together in the end. This is one hell of a good book about a kid who grew up the best he could under very difficult circumstances and made a good life and carved out a distinguished literary career for himself. I may have to try his other memoir, Heaven's Coast, now. - Tim Bazzett, author of Reed City Boy and Pinhead

Rising from the ashes
Firebird is another tour de force by Mark Doty.The power in this book comes from two sources - the writing and the story.Mark Doty is first and foremost a poet.He uses language to paint pictures, using metaphors that speak to the imagination and causes the reader to consider the power of language.Metaphors cause us to go deeper into the story and make it our own.Mark Doty is a master of language.He can make even the ugliest realities beautiful and personal.

The story in Firebird is also very powerful.It is a story of longing and discovery.In some ways, Doty centers his story on the line from Petula Clark's classic Downtown -"Maybe you know a little place you can go to / where they never close - Downtown."He searches for that place where he can go and be himself, a whole person not torn apart by insecurity and loneliness.How well so many of us can relate to this!

It is interesting to note that Firebird was written after Heaven's Coast, a memoir about Doty's later life and the death of his partner.Maybe he needed to delve into the meaning of the present before he could unearth the pains of the past.Both books are very much worth reading.They will remain with you long after you finish reading them.

A Mysterious, Beautiful Memoir
I read (and met) Mark Doty while I was in college. On the grass at Sarah Lawrence, I memorized his sad, beautiful poetry and read and re-read his book, Heaven's Coast, chronicling his life with his partner dying from AIDS. So, I was very excited when Firebird was chosen by my book club. Again, I found myself amazed and delighted by Mark Doty's use of imagery, but I was also disappointed as the book leapt from experience to experience without explanation. Maybe this is why I never felt "inside" his character, and at the end, was left feeling as though the chapters were more like poems, mysterious pieces of his life that were without resolution. Mark Doty is a man of great accomplishment, a poet of unquestionable talent, but after this book, he's still a mystery to me.

Evolution of a poet
It's not always a pretty story, but it's always intellectually and emotionally moving. Mark Doty is one of America's finest writers of poetry and prose. That such a mind should have triumphed over his stressful growing up years is remarkable. His background would have landed many other kids in a foster home. Firebird is a coming-of-age memoir of a pre-gay geeky kid with a deranged and alcoholic mother, a passive/conflicted father, and a sister whose middle name is Trouble.
Firebird is beautifully written, revealing how a person who lives in a world of art, music, and literature rose from the ashes of his youth like the proverbial Phoenix of legend. It could easily have been titled Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but somebody got to that one first. ... Read more

Product Description
A loving and admiring companion for half a century to literary titan Ezra Pound, concert violinist Olga Rudge was the muse who inspired the poet to complete his epic poem, The Cantos, and the mother of his only daughter, Mary. Strong-minded and defiant of conventions, Rudge knew the best and worst of times with Pound. With him, she coped with the wrenching dislocations brought about by two catastrophic world wars and experienced modernism's radical transformation of the arts.In this enlightening biography, Anne Conover offers a full portrait of Olga Rudge (1895–1996), drawing for the first time on Rudge's extensive unpublished personal notebooks and correspondence. Conover explores Rudge's relationship with Pound, her influence on his life and career, and her perspective on many details of his controversial life, as well as her own musical career as a violinist and musicologist and a key figure in the revival of Vivaldi's music in the 1930s. In addition to mining documentary sources, the author interviewed Rudge and family members and friends. The result is a vivid account of a highly intelligent and talented woman and the controversial poet whose flame she tended to the end of her long life.The book quotes extensively from the Rudge–Pound letters--an almost daily correspondence that began in the 1920s and continued until Pound's death in 1972. These letters shed light on many aspects of Pound's disturbing personality; the complicated and delicate balance he maintained between the two most significant women in his life, Olga and his wife Dorothy, for fifty years; the birth of Olga and Ezra's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz; Pound's alleged anti-Semitism and Fascist sympathies; his wartime broadcasts over Rome radio and indictment for treason; and his twelve-year incarceration in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the mentally ill. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nearly incomprehensible in three or four languages
Anne Conover's biography of Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound is nearly incomprehensible in three or four languages.Conover's style seems to be to write a topic sentence, then devote the rest of the paragraph to an extended quote, in English, French, Italian or perhaps in Pound's eccentric prose, from her research.The reseach, indeed, is wonderful and, I'm sure, of great benefit to Pound scholars.

But should we not expect from a biographer the ability to string together a cogent narrative, to take the reader smoothly from point to point?In the early chapters, for example, Conover shoves the reader from the point where Pound and Rudge meet to Rudge expecting Pound's child in a few disjointed, ungainful leaps.The story is difficult to follow, with facts and (historical) figures introduced almost at random, like paint thrown carelessly on a canvas.

This reader, for one, was disappointed that such interesting and valuable research has been so badly mugged.Shame on Yale for publishing this without taking time to edit it in a professional way, or at least to provide some guidance to a novice biographer. ... Read more

Product Description
Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936), Russia's first openly gay writer, stood at the epicenter of the turbulent cultural and social life of Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad for over three decades. A poet of the caliber of Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, and Marina Tsvetaeva (and acknowledged as such by them and other contemporaries), Kuzmin was also a prose writer, playwright, critic, translator, and composer who was associated with every aspect of modernism's history in Russia, from Symbolism to the Leningrad avant-gardes of the 1920s. This biography, the first in any language to be based on full and uncensored access to the writer's private papers, including his notorious Diary, places Kuzmin in the context of his society and times and contributes to our discovery and appreciation of a fascinating period and of Russia's long suppressed gay history. ... Read more

Product Description
A celebrated poet and doctor connects—through favorite verses and stories from his life and practice—poetry and healing.

As a respected and much-loved doctor, Rafael Campo shares favorite poems with patients on his rounds. After all, incantation has played a role in healing for millennia, displaced only recently by modern scientific obsessions.

In this luminous book, Campo restores the link between poetry and healing, offering "pharmaceutical" samples of work by a diverse group of poets such as Mark Doty, Marilyn Hacker, Miroslav Holub, Audre Lorde, Lucia Perillo, and William Carlos Williams. He leads us through the stages of illness and recuperation, from first inklings of mortality through symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment, and finally recovery or—and here medicine recoils but poetry perseveres—death, and even immortality.

At each stage, Campo reveals the richness of individual poems and the potent medicine they offer. Ultimately, he proposes a "biocultural" model of illness as provocative as it is humane—one that restores the art of poetry to its rightful place at the heart of a healthy society. 10 b/w illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

As John's partner at just before publishing.....
This book, an interesting documentary of 18th and 19th homosexuality in America captured my interest though it was a subject I would normallybecome absolutely bored.Jack's style is so intense that the reader isquickly pulled into his "spell" in the process, becoming immersedin the emotional outpouring of grief as well as the inability ofFitz-Greene Halleck to find any romantic/emotional support which could fillhis void. So exemplary are these allusions, this reader was not sure whoexactly was being documented.Life did not get any better with the loss ofhis one love; a love who could never give him what he wanted though it isnever clear why.The fact that he was married was an indication that hewas "in the closet" and it is not disclosed whether or not aphysical/sexual relationship was ever consumated. Dr. Hallock spent muchtime researching the facts for this book and when finished(10 years ofresearch), it was as if "Fitz-Greene" could finally rest. Enjoyed the book immensely, reading it with Jack's mother in his house inPhiladelphia - though it appeared he was able to bring the emotions ofFitz-Greene to life.Well worth the paper back, at least. ... Read more

Product Description
A Stonewall Honor Book of the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table"Rare and Commonplace Flowers performs an invaluable service: unforgettably memorializing the remarkable Lota de Macedo Soares, and in the process filling in a crucial gap in Bishop's biography. This book honors a deeply moving love between two brilliant women: each highly public, a celebrity in her own nation; each deeply private, and happy (for a time) in the fragile heaven of their home."-The New York Times Book Review"As a portrait of Lota and Bishop in Brazil, Rare and Commonplace Flowers is a rare and illuminating book."-Women's Review of Books"Novelist Oliveira's engaging dual biography tells of [Bishop and Soares's] 'long and sad' relationship. . . . This book offers a new perspective on the American poet, and the love story between these two women is undeniably intense and tragic. Recommended."-Library JournalRare and Commonplace Flowers tells the story of two fascinating and controversial women. Elizabeth Bishop, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, sought artistic inspiration in Brazil. There she fell in love with Lota de Macedo Soares, a self-trained Brazilian architect. This dual biography-brilliantly researched, and written in a lively, novelistic style-follows their relationship from 1951 to 1967, the time when the two lived together in Brazil.A tale of two artists and two cultures, Rare and Commonplace Flowers offers unique perspectives on both women and their work. Carmen L. Oliveira provides an unparalleled level of detail and insight, due to both her familiarity with Brazil and her access to the country's artistic elite, many of whom had a direct connection with Bishop and Soares. Rare pictures of the two artists and their home bring this unique story to life.Carmen L. Oliveira is a Brazilian novelist. Neil K. Besner is a professor in the English department at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Plesasurable reading
Rare and Commonplace Flowers innovates in the scholarly field. A carefully documented biography, it reconstructs step by step the story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares.Carmen Oliveira's literary achievement lies in conveying this research of undeniable academid value in a very agreeable piece of storytelling.A must for Women's Studies, the book is recommended to anyone who enjoys a good read.

At last, in English!
This book is a treasure, a delightful read.It speaks to a broad range of interests.Fans of Elizabeth Bishop will enjoy learning about her relationship with Lota and her experiences during the 17 years she lived in Brazil.If you are interested in Brazilian history and politics, you will find a rare account of the early sixties in Rio de Janeiro, as the country headed toward military dictatorship.It is also a marvelous and tragic love story.

As an American living in Brazil for the past 20 years, I found it a fascinating account of how Lota and her country provided a haven for Bishop, an orphan prone to writer's block and alcoholism.Rare and Commonplace Flowers, read in addition to Bishop's letters, opens a whole new window on her writing. Ever since I read the original in Portuguese, in 1995, I have been convinced that it merits the attention of non-Portuguese speakers.Thanks to the excellent translation of Neil Besner, you've got it! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (26)

Fascinating and heartbreaking
Sam Steward was one of those individuals who was unique to his age, and yet very few people know that he existed. An active homosexual, Steward took copious notes about his sex life and made amazing contributions to the study of male homosexuality for Alfred Kinsey. As a tattoo artist, Steward brought talent to the field and used it as an opportunity to gain access to his fetish (roughs and men in uniform, particularly sailors). As a teacher, he was extremely popular and talented, and inspired many of his students. But as a writer, where his great gift lied, he was pretty much a failure and due to his obsessions (alcohol at first, barbiturates towards the end of his life, sex throughout), unable to fulfill the promise his first novel indicated. Instead, he turned to tattooing (an art form, true) and later writing pornographic novels based on his real life activities.

Ultimately, Steward was a fascinating if not tragic character, and Secret Historian introduces us to a true renegade who should be hailed as a hero of the gay liberation movement. Although closeted, he lived his life as he needed to live it, and it is unsung heroes like him who's stories need to be told.

Interesting book, NO ILLUSTRATIONS IN KINDLE EDITION
This book is fascinating, but I wanted to warn potential buyers that the Kindle edition has none of the pages of photos included in the hardcover edition.For me, this kills the book. I am going to ask for a refund.

TOTALLY FASCINATIN READ!

My overall impression of Sam Steward's life was one of empathy & identification. Although he possessed much more education & opportunity than I, much of his own accord; his basic feelings toward life & his sexual orientation/activity is what I could most closely associate with. I really came to care very much for Sam Steward; someone I had never known of even heard of until I read this book's review in The New York Times.
THANK YOU Justin Spring for pursuing this work into publication; I am most heartily grateful to you.

A Professor of Sex
Samuel Steward (aka Phil Sparrow, Phil Andros) lived (1909-1993) an interesting life.A boyhood that, if not necessarily unhappy, was not an easy one.He obtains a doctorate in English literature and then a series of untenured teaching jobs, mostly in Chicago and at Catholic institutions, for which, temperamentally, he was not well suited.Sam was homosexual and the years of his adulthood were, well, let us say, unpropitious for gays in America.On the other hand Steward never found it difficult, until he reached a certain age, to find sexual partners.He diligently compiled a card file detailing all the thousands of his sexual experiences (from Rudolf Valentino on), which Alfred Kinsey considered to be of enormous scientific interest and significance. (Steward was one of Kinsey's main homosexual sources for his study of male sexuality.)Sam loved Europe, especially France, and visited the country as often as his limited resources allowed.Hankering for a literary career, he boldly introduced himself to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, who become life-long friends.(Steward published late in life the letters they wrote him, under the title "Dear Sammy.")He met Gide and Cocteau and became Thorton Wilder's lover, apparently Wilder's longest lasting relationship.Then Steward becomes interested in tattooing (he always was attracted to sailors) and opened a tattoo parlor in Chicago while he was still teaching at De Paul University.There was some inconcinnity between Steward's two professions and eventually, when his external employment was discovered by university authorities, Steward was terminated, although he informed his students (he was quite a popular teacher) thathe had quit.Life becoming less endurable in Chicago, Steward moved to Oakland, CA, opened a tattoo shop there and soon became the favorite artist of the local branch of the Hell's Angels.His literary career only took off when he began publishing gay pornography, of a higher literary standard than is usual, under the nom de plume of Phil Andros.Steward never made much money at it (porn publishers didn't then pay well), but Sam found the labor fulfilling.Late in life, his health declined and he still lived in a very rough neighborhood.Thankfully, a few friends were there to take care of him until the end.
"Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade" by Justin Spring, is a reasonably well written and lively book. (With a subject like Steward, how could it not be?)I'm not fond of the "sexual renegade" bit; I suppose it's there for hype. But otherwise, this is a book I would strongly recommend both because Stewardis interesting and because the book sheds much light on what it was like to be homosexual in America before Stonewall.

Required reading
This book should be required for all gay men. At different times in this compelling bio, Steward's life story will remind you of just about every gay man you know. Just when you think his life story can't get more interesting, it does. Just be careful that someone doesn't read it over your shoulder on mass transit. This book, like Steward, goes from discreet to graphic in an instant. ... Read more

Product Description
The compelling story of a slave, owned by the author's ancestors, who became one of thesingular artists of the nineteenthcentury.He is known today, as he was then, only asDave. His pots and storage jars were everydayitems, but because of their beauty and massivesize, and because Dave signed and inscribed many with poems, they now fetch six figures atauction. We know of no other slave artist whodared to put his name on his work, a dangerousadvertisement of literacy.

Fascinatedby the man and by this troubling family history, Leonard Todd moved from Manhattan to Edgefield,South Carolina, where his ancestors hadestablished a thriving pottery industry in theearly 1800s. Todd studied each of Dave's poemsfor biographical clues, which he pieced together with local records and family letters to createthis moving and dramatic chronicle of Dave'slife—a story of creative triumph in the midst of slavery. Many of Dave's astounding jars arefound now in America's finest museums. 8 pages of color; 31 black & white ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A Legend
CAROLINA CLAY:The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave is about a noble slave potter esteemed as, `Dave the Slave.'Leonard Todd has researched the life of this African-American and confirms Dave the Slave was a true artisan, contributing to America without fail.In this determined effort, Mr. Todd aspires to give Dave the Slave national reverence.Dave the Slave was a master clay artisan who secretly learned to read and write, then courageously inscribed the pottery he made.These "inscriptions" revealed a brighter side of slave life, showing that the splendid Dave the Slave loved to make his signature pottery, making his work, and now this book, a collector's gem!

What readers will immediately glean from CAROLINA CLAY:The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave is Dave the Slave emerged as the master of the booming clay industry.His perfect clay jugs were ideal for storing foods, etc.His poetic couplets inscribed on his work uniquely reflects the normal events of slavery unfolding.The book takes you inside the liberal slave-owning Landrum family kiln.You will learn how the slave system's economic affects included selling slaves, involuntary slave migrations, the civil war, fancy girls, and mulatto kids.You will wonder with strong interest if another Phyllis Wheatley story is unfolding and you will discover Dave the Slave's couplet messages on his pottery are timeless press releases of love, faith, history, gossip, and humor.

CAROLINA CLAY:The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave provides slave history in a lighter way without minimizing the fears, pains, and sorrows of a slave.You will enjoy the beautiful photos and will better understand historical events including Dave the Slave's five-year silence when anti-literacy laws were strictly enforced.The genius of Dave the Slave as a historian in his own rite is evidenced in his messages such as:

"Dave belongs to Mr. Miles/

wher (sic) the oven bakes & the pot biles="

This indicates who his master was.Other messages reveal the bible's influence on Dave the Slave through challenging times such as the civil war.

"I, made this Jar, all of cross

If, you don't repent, you will be, lost="

Through investigations, travels, and interviews, the story lures readers into the mystifying excitement over Stony Bluff, and inspires a will Dave's-real-wife-please-stand nostalgia, and appreciates the dignity of Strom Thurmond's mulatto daughter.What ultimately develops is a great story about a great slave who made a significant contribution in a simple way, but two-fold.

While the slave journey is always an emotional one for African-Americans, you find a sense of pride nonetheless through the poetic accomplishments of Dave the Slave.At last, the South is forever bound to the Union and a freed Dave writes no more.CAROLINA CLAY:The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave brings the noble Dave the Slave completely and intelligently into the 21st century!

Reviewed by Swaggie Coleman
for The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Carolina Clay
This is a fine book; easy to read and informative. For any who have seen these beautiful pots on Antique Road Show or in museums, it is fascinating to learn about the way they came to be, and the times Dave lived in.I would recommend it to anyone interested in history or biography.When I finished it, I donated it to the local library, so others could enjoy it.

Excellent book from a great dealer!!
A super deal! Not only is the book VERY well written but the customer service and price from the seller (A1 Books) was great!! I'm one "happy camper"!!

Great read! A positive story in a dreadful time
A well researched look into the life and time of the slave potter named Dave.

I enjoyed this book because it was a personal account of a man who lived under the terrible conditions of slavery and somehow managed to provide us all with his gift to history.

A must read!

Hooray for "Dave"


This is a most interesting book because it teaches something about the history of pot-making, and it conveys something of the condition of African Americans in the 19th century under the aegis of slavery.Devotees of both art pottery and American history will fine this book very valuable. ... Read more

Product Description
The author describes his life, his disenchantment with Communism, and his incarceration in Soviet prisons as a dissident. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good Explanation of the Politcal Division in 20th Century Poland and Russia
Though it is only one man's view, the book provides a good explanation for why communism never took off in popularity in Poland like it did in Russia. An interesting account of the political currents in independent Poland between the world wars. Also an interesting account of life in the gulags and the places people scattered to, like Khazikstan, when World War II broke out. There must be countless stories like this one, that will never be heard about. I also very much liked Milosz's Legends of Modernity, and Wat's experience truly augmented that read.

History as remembered
Aleksander Wat created this exceptional memoir solely by talking to Czeslaw Milosz during one year in Berkeley in the sixties. The memories of Wat (at that time already ill and very depressed) together with questions put to him by Milosz, a Nobel Prize winning poet and novelist, formed a unique book (in Poland circulated illegally for a long time and extremely popular).

Both Wat and Milosz went through the communist system and opposed it at the end, but Milosz early on chose emigration, leaving Poland initially for France and then for the US, while Wat, initially believing in The Party and the power of the working class, suffered the full impact of the machine. He tells the story of his enthusiastic youth, describes his fellow poets and writers, then moves on to his arrest and moving through Soviet prisons, without a trial for a long time, recalling other inmates and their stories, the methods for survival, the thoughts and torments. Then, finally moved to the work camp, he depicts in acute detail the life of the families and their struggle for sanity.

The New York Review of Books edition contains also the memoir of Ola (Paulina) Wat, Aleksander's wife, who supported him throughout his ordeal.

Although there are many books of experiences of the communist camps and especially the tortures of the intellectuals, who were torn between the idea of communism and its soon obvious wrong, every witness has eyes of their own and Wat, with his Jewish background and the soul of a Polish artist, makes his own, original statement.

Keeping the Memory Green
Andre Malraux wrote that only three books -- Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote and The Idiot--retained their truth for those who had seen prisons and concentration camps (see: Les Noys de l'Altenburg (Paris 1948)).It's an odd remark--what did he mean, "seen"?Suffered in?Or watched newsreel footage on the History Channel? One cannot escape the conviction that Malraux is trying to hype the aroma of glamour around his own life.

But this is a distraction.The question is: I wonder what he thinks of the extraordinary array of "witness literature" from Europe beginning, perhaps, with Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead" and ending (one may hope?) with Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago."

In this chorus, Aleksander Wat's "My Century" stands as a luminous example.Wat was a Pole: Jewish by background but at last a convert to Christianity.He was a poet and a "literary person" before and after World War II.Along the way, he spent time in 13 (or was it 14?) different prisons, all simply for being who he was."

His "memoir" is not precisely something he "wrote."Wat spent the year 1964-5 in Berkeley. There he fell in with Czeslaw Milosz, a great poet in his own right.Largely with the encouragement of Milosz, he "dictated" his story in a series of interviews which have been somewhat recast for this book.It's just as harrowing as you would expect it to be it has its uplifting side, driven by Wat's amazing inner resouurces: one thing about a good education, it gives you stuff to think about in Prison.And even at the worst, his sense of humor does not fail him. He recounts the story of the citizens of Bukhara, who surrendered to Ghengis Khan--only to have Ghengis Khan order their massacre. As Ghengis Khan explained to the elders:

"You must have sinned greatly against God if he sent Ghengis Khan down on you!"

Aside from Wat's own story, the NYRB edition includes an astonishing narrative by his wife, recounting a particularly dreadful chapter in her own prison years.

There is a promising-looking biography by Tomas Venclova, but I haven't read it.Wat died in 1967, I believe (though I can't seem to pin this down) a suicide. ... Read more

Product Description
A leading American novelist's memory of a major contemporary American poet and the spirits that haunted his most celebrated and controversial work, Alison Lurie is known for the sophisticated satire and Pulitzer-winning prose of her novels and stories. In Familiar Spirits, she lovingly evokes two true-life intimates who are now lost to her. In her signature mix of comedy and analysis Lurie recalls Merrill and his longtime partner, David Jackson and their lives together in New York, Athens, Stonington, Connecticut, and Key West.

Familiar Spirits reveals both the worldly and other worldly sources of what Merrill called his "chronicles of love and loss." Merrill was known for the autobiographical element in his work and here, we are introduced to the over thirty years of Ouija board sessions that brought gods and ghosts into his and David Jackson's lives, and also into Merill's brilliant book length poem, The Changing Light at Sandover.Lurie suggests that Jackson's contribution to this work was so great that he might, in a sense, be recognized as Merrill's coauthor. Her account of Merrill and Jackson's long and inspired relationship with the supernatural and its tragic end will not only surprise many readers, but stand as a poignant memorial to her lost friends.Amazon.com Review
Written with her characteristic grace, novelist Alison Lurie's memoir of her friendship with the poet James Merrill and his companion David Jackson offers more than reminiscences, though these are tender, frank, and perceptive. Lurie also considers the broader subjects of fame's arbitrary nature and its impact on a relationship, as well as the perils and pleasures of dabbling in the occult. When she first became close to the couple in 1954, all three were struggling young writers. But while Merrill soon became a critically respected poet, and novels like The War Between the Tates made Lurie some money as well as a reputation, Jackson remained unpublished and obscure. He was understandably frustrated, and Lurie suggests that the pair's increasing involvement in sessions on their Ouija board were partly an effort to find an outlet for Jackson's creative energies. These sessions formed the basis for Merrill's long poem "The Changing Light at Sandover" (in Lurie's estimation not the best use of his gifts), and she believes they encouraged the men to become dangerously isolated from the real world. Jackson began to drink more heavily, and his casual affairs grew more irritating to Merrill, who launched a serious relationship with a young actor whose uncritical devotion exacerbated tensions between the longtime lovers. Merrill died of AIDS in 1995; the physically and mentally debilitated Jackson, writes Lurie, "is now a ghost in Key West." Her sensitive recollections bring back the time when they were young, beautiful, and in love, with the world before them. Examining the personal and artistic cost of their decades-long engagement with the spirit world, Lurie asks the always relevant, never resolvable questions, "How much should one risk for art? What chances should one take?" --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Friendly Fire
How unfortunate that the self-appointed biographer (though she terms it a memoir) of James Merrill should take such a dull and dreary approach, ploddingly setting about trying to debunk James Merrill & David Jackson's decades of experiences with a Ouija board that so beautifully resulted in Merrill's masterpiece, The Changing Light at Sandover.

Alison Lurie, by her own admission, recognizes Merrill as "supernaturally brilliant," but his intelligence is so other than or beyond her own that she literally likens him to a Martian. Apparently unable to comprehend the content of Merrill's epic work, and making it clear that she doesn't even like it, Lurie instead settles for a tedious dissection. Smoke, mirrors, string, simplistic attempts at psychoanalyzing Merrill; surely something besides the truth of reality must be behind all of this communicating-with-spirits hocus-pocus. And, contradictorily, her broad condemning brushstrokes at once paint the Ouija experiences as the mere summoning of Merrill and/or Jackson's unconscious mind(s) (she's offended by what the spirits have to say about her) and the dangerous communing with devils and demons.

Perhaps if she had actually read Merrill's books, instead of mining them for ammunition against him, this mean-spirited little book would have had something of value to offer.

Alas, this book reads as little more than a paean to Lurie's dislike of Merrill, and is ultimately more about how SHE feels about her subject than it is about Merrill himself. It's rather sickening to imagine her years of "friendship" with the man, which seem to have been little more than the collecting of criticisms and private details for future use in this petty volume.

This book does a disservice to the passion, commitment and spiritual intensity of the lives and work of James Merrill and David Jackson as so eloquently and painstakingly communicated in Merrill's work. I recommend interested readers go directly to The Changing Light at Sandover, and skip this diluted and negatively biased "memoir."

Wonderful beach read
I seldom read fiction, but I've enjoyed three of Alison Lurie's novels. After my attention fell on the work of James Merrill, and I saw that Alison Lurie had written about him, I ran, not walked, to the library to get her book. It was everything I expected: a wonderful gossip, a further stimulus to read James Merrill's poems, and a work of insight about the literary culture of Key West--which I found even more interesting because I once talked with Alison Lurie and several other writers there at a Key West Festival.

Alison Lurie knew James Merrill and his lover David Jackson for many years. She doesn't allow us to understand why they befriended her, but we have no trouble understanding why she befriended them. They were fun, cultured, intellectual, supportive, and moneyed, and shared interests with Alison Lurie. Jimmy often swam with her and David cooked with her. If this book seems to contain gaps and mysteries, it's probably because Alison Lurie has held back in her account in respect of their friendship. She has done us a favor to tell as much as she does. I was less interested in the theories about the Ouija Board and actually skipped some of her deconstruction of Merrill's poetry. Her defense of David Jackson as co-author of Merrill's work has merit. Jackson, although she doesn't seem to realize it, was (is) a self-destructive personality. His deterioration is self-evident in the anecdote about his angry driving in Italy in 1978, years before Peter Hooten entered Merrill's life. One is forced to wonder how Merrill died of AIDS and the other two remained untouched by it.

eerie cautionary tale
This is a beautifully written long view of the lives of James Merrill, poet, and his lover and uncredited collaborator David Jackson.They dabbled through the ouija board in contact with unseen spirits that supposedly provided the material for Merrill's largest poetic works.The cost to both men of this eerie devotion is trenchantly narrated by Alison Lurie, their friend of many years.The charge that Ms. Lurie is using her connection to Merrill to enhance her own reputation is absurd, as she is far more well known in general than Merrill.

Very gossipy little book. Yetfascinating and embarassing.
In spite of the fact that the author reveals a bit too much of herself in this book (a fact which makes you like and then dislike her sometimes) she does weave an interesting theory about the inner workings of Merrill and Jackson's minds. I didn't feel she presented these men dishonestly, though some fans of Merrill's obviously resented the fact that their god was made to appear as a mere mortal---and a somewhat foolish one at that.

Juicy, gossipy, lewd, audacious at times, you had to imagine she was indeed capitalizing somewhat on her friendship with Merrill because she did not wait for her friend David Jackson to die before she began revealing what a mess he had become. Why? If she were afraid SHE would die without having a chance to add her two cents she could have written the book, but not published it until after Jackson's real death.

I guess it's hard to quarrel with her motives as I read it in one sitting, lapping up all the strange, weird revelations about these men. My respect for them was not diminished by her lurid details of their intimate life. Nothing in Key West is ever ordinary...

What was most fascinating about the book though was the fact that Lurie herself became an equal part of the mystery. Was she obsessed with these men? Secretly in love with Jackson? Jealous of them? Twice she had to say that "they were rich and could buy anything they wanted". Twice!

Sadly, Lurie never did manage to do what she wanted---to comprehend these men. This goal never got quite satisfied, so in the end the reader of this book is not quite satisfied.

It is an important memoir though because it is the ONLY one right now offering any insight into Merrill, the man and the poet.

I think you have to accept the book for exactly what it is, one woman's perspective about two men she was close to---but not close enough to truly understand them. It was an honest attempt on Lurie's part and a courageous one even and it did reveal Lurie's writing talent. For better or worse, she certainly did create a very vivid yet terrifying tale about two utterly amazing lives.

why did it have to end like this?
The story is strongest when she is most generous to her characters and most fully shares her own story within theirs.At times, she writes out of her anger at those who hurt her friends, at them for not staying true to love and beauty, and at the world for its unhappiness.She doesn't have nearly enough distance from JM's spaghetti western svengali and DJ's young black hustlers to write about them for publication.

How could two so full of love have come to such a sad end?The answer, it seems at times, is that gay marriage in our world doesn't have the structuring social context to do the work we expect from marriage.But we need to know more about her, her own loves, her children and her novels in order to speak honestly with her about the long haul.

The ouija board saves the marriage by holding it together under the burden of professional success and failure.And it destroys them both.It ruins JM as a poet -- he writes a beautiful "Book of Ephraim," then two more fat, quick and unreflective books of spirit-writing, then not much else.It draws them away from friends and life into a compelling fantasy they only partly believe in, are afraid of, and that becomes gradually coarser and uglier.As she sees it, James dies bewildered and ruined, while David loses his mind and soul to the devils.

She paints beautiful, vivid portraits of her friends in their youth. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of thoughts, remembrances, and opinions from childhood in the 20's & 30's and WWII years as an adult soldier to the present, including true happenings in combat on Leyte, P.I.; Sounds of the town once prominent, long since disappeared and lost as the generation fades also. Life on a farm during the depression and my father making ends meet. ... Read more

Product Description
This pioneering and highly original study explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men (Edwin Waugh and John Bright) who are taken as representative of what "working class" and "middle class" meant in England in thenineteenth century. The book points the way forward to a new history of democracy as an imagined entity. It represents a deepening of the author's engagement with "post-modernist" theory, in the process offering a critique of the conservatism and complacency of much academic history, particularly in Britain. ... Read more

Product Description


"Richard Leach brings the joy and angst of making his living as a professional musician to his poetry. Richard's poems swing with music and soul."

- Wanda VanHoy Smith, Redondo Beach Poet

Vibrato is a collection of mostly music related stories, poems and tales as seen through the seasoned guitarist viewpoint.

"It has been said that musicians get paid for lugging their gear, travel time and they play for free. These stories give us an inside look in the life of a gigging musician and tell another side of why we get paid (or not) in a style that is as pure and soulful as the licks that come from his guitar." - Joe Puerta, AMBROSIA

"Reading Richard's prose is like reading about my life as a musician. He lays it on the line and does it oh, so delightfully!" - John Hatton, Bassist, Brian Setzer Orchestra - Jose Feliciano

"Your poetry and guitar playing always go over so well here. The poem How Many Nights really hits home with so many musicians. Please come back anytime!" - Matt Lincir, Alva's Show Room

"I enjoyed the business side of things. You tell it like it is. Looking forward to your new book as well as will many of our customers." - Paul "Chico" Fernandez, Santa Monica Music ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Vibrato
I like the way Richard incorporated famous songs in his prose.I would like to see him play the guitar with his teeth... Micheline, San Pedro CA

A Musician's Life Stories in Verse
Richard Leach shares his 40-plus years of experiences in the music business and life in general in straight-ahead, unpretentious verse that is sure to put a smile on the face of anyone who has ever shlepped their gear through a hotel lobby on the way to a "gig."Even if you haven't done that, one of the poems/stories is sure to touch your heart in some way. ... Read more

Product Description
Written in poet Michael Klein's uniquely passionate voice, The End of Being Known explores the lines that define yet also blur the boundaries of sex, friendship, and compatibility. This collection of autobiographical essays probes the manifestations of sexual desire in its mystical variety: incest, falling in love, being a twin, and inhabiting the world of anonymous sex-in practice, and, in an essay about the Body Electric movement-as something recuperative and renewing.

Each essay unfurls in a hybrid of poetry, narrative, and fragmentary literary devices. Here is an uncompromising gaze upon the quandaries of those whose sexual, emotional, and relational worlds collide, yielding no answer to the riddle of desire. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Poetic Musings
Klein, Michael. "The End of Being Known', University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Poetic Musings

Amos Lassen and Literary Pride

"The End of Being Known" by Michael Klein is one of the books in the University of Wisconsin's Living Out--Gay and Lesbian Autobiography series and what a welcome addition it is. It reads like sheer poetry on topics that have been poetic before. Klein had been abused by his stepfather and was addicted to alcohol for part of his life and was unable to maintain a log-term relationship. When Klein became sober, he felt that he had reached "the end of being known". His life has had little happiness and not only did he have sex with his stepfather but with his twin brother as well. He writes beautifully about what it is to be a twin and he deftly uses his gifts as a poet in these musings on his life and his writing is laden with images and emotion. His language is dreamy and allusive, somewhat dreamlike and quite repetitive. Having spent much of his life in Provincetown, there is a great deal of focus on seascapes and the weather of the seaside location giving a somewhat elusive quality.
Klein writes of love and the lack of it and his own sexual proclivities. Sometimes it is hard to discern the difference between friend and lover and between love ad lust and desire and amity. It seems that Klein has always had trouble understanding both intimacy and sex and therefore has spent most of his life as a loner.
It is easy to sense the passion in the author's voice as he writes about his somewhat mentally unstable twin brother, about becoming sober, and about his own personal ruminations. As looks at the sexual manifestations of the gay world, we are privy to the mysticism of it. When he writes about anonymous sexual liaisons, we should be shocked but instead we are drawn into the beauty of the language. Each of the chapters is an essay unto itself and the book is held together by a combination of various literary devices. We get a look at a man whose emotional and sexual and familial worlds crash one into the other but we never get an answer to the riddle of his desire.
The voice of the author is both bold and beautiful at the same time and each sentence is both metaphor and honest fact. Klein manages to convey in one sentence what many of us are unable to say in pages. He treats emotional life as a fruit to be peeled open and as he removes the outer rind, we see the inner workings of his sexual and emotional being. The honesty of the short i35 page book is raw and brutal yet beautiful.
We live in a world where indifference for one another seems to be the rule and dishonesty and cruelty prevail. Klein shows us honesty and kindness, responsibility and truth. This is what gives the book its beauty--what it has to say to all of us.

A Gorgeous Meditation on Sex, Love and Loneliness
This is a rare book.Non-narrative, in the best sense of the word, it reads like a long poem about relationships, New York in the '70's, anonymous sex, Provincetown -- well known markers of gay life but told in a completely original way.Klein makes amazing sentences from our deepest longings and joys and fears. ... Read more

Product Description
The name of John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, is synonymous with excess. One of the most outrageous luminaries at the court of Charles II, he drank himself to death at the age of 33. This biography examines the nature of Rochester's alcoholism and its effects on the man and his poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Atrociously inaccurate and biased
If I could possibly rate this book any lower, I would. This is the most insulting, inaccurate piece of literary doggerel I have ever read in my life, made worse by the fact that it actually made it to print. The author has tried to take a modern view of the Earl's life, which is commended, but he has somehow managed to distort even the simplest facts about the poet's life and work. Even some of the poems cited in this book are not by Wilmot at all! If he cannot even get these facts correct, what hope is there for the correct telling of the man's personal life? The answer is none; the author's obsessional views on the "disease of alcoholism" have rendered this book into a blatant attempt to explain away the poet's faults by means of the old excuse "the bottle made him do it". This has been proved to be blatantly false, as anybody who has studied the Earl's life in-depth can see.
For those of you new or old to the Earl's life and work, wanting to read an accurate up-to-date account of his life, the best book for doing so is the modern and revised A Profane Wit : The Life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, which can also be found for purchase on Amazon. I have read almost all of the literary works available on the Earl, so I can tell you from experience how offensive this book is to anybody who knows the real story. Do not waste your money on this trash; save it instead for the magnificently detailed "Profane Wit".
If there was a justice system for books, this one would get the electric chair.

Apples, Oranges, History and Conjecture
This is probably one of the most useless biographies of Rochester in print.The bibliography is rather dismal and, while the scholarship is adequate, there is nothing available in it that cannot be better found in Greene's Lord Rochester's Monkey or The Debt to Pleasure.

Most galling is the author's chronic harping on Rochester's alcoholism as a means to understand his verse.Last time I was in any institution of higher learning, fanciful modern analysis did not equate to literary criticism.Yes, we all know Rochester was a prodigious drinker in a time of prodigious drinkers.Lamb goes on for pages as though explaining what portion of the AA banner Rochester falls under can really pinpoint his genius.He forgets that the 17th century was a world of drink.Farmers started their day with a pound of bacon and pints of small beer.When observed in context with his time, Lamb utterly fails to make his case, saying more about himself, perhaps, than Rochester.

While his "findings" may have some small merit, they are not by any means the 'way' to either understand Rochester in the context of his world, or his poetry, which is transcendent of time, drink, or illness, venereal or otherwise.

Worse, there is a smug misogeny throughout the entire volume that set my teeth completely on edge.Lamb refers to "female students" and "women readers" with a condescension that is deplorable.His editor should be catisgated for not expurging such passages.I do not recall that gender had any bearing on scholarly literary analysis.

All in all, as a serious student of Rochester's poetry, I was insulted and felt swindled by a book that purports to be a biography and reads like a 12-step advertisement.

Pass on this and instead, read Lord Rochester's Monkey and The Debt to Pleasure.This is a waste of money.

This one feels like the author really knew the person
This is an excellent biography of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the character Johnny Depp plays in "The Libertine."

I've read several books about Wilmot in the past two years, and I have enjoyed this more, gotten more out of it, and feel I have finally gotten a handle on the man who was so brilliant and so tragic.

The author, Jeremy Lamb, didn't just sit in some ivory tower, he traveled to where the Earl lived, worked and died. He has quotes from his contemporaries, his letters, his poetry and prose.And this is all very cleverly woven into a fascinating and gripping story of the Earl's life.Unlike the other rather scholarly works I've read, this one gets right into the personality of Wilmot, dissecting it, but not in a dry removed manner, rather it's as if you have an insight into the intriguing and paradoxical Earl.

I suggest you get this book if you want to have a more intimate glimpse into not only the life of John Wilmot, but his period in history and the fascinating people he lived with, loved, and even hated. ... Read more

Product Description
Emma Lazarus’s most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable life has remained a mystery until now.She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her–a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before thse categories even existed.

Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entrée into New York’s elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as “outlaw” Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe–refugees whose lives had little in common with her own–helped redefine the meaning of America itself.

In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus’s place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today–a world that she helped to invent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

"Give me your tired, your poor,"
Interesting book about activist and poet Emma Lazarus, the lady who wrote the Statue of Liberty poem. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

worthy work of an unjustly neglected figure
A worthwhile biography by a scholar who blends critical insight with sheer enthusiasm in a very appealing manner. By the late 1870s and 1880s, Browning, Whitman, Henry James, Emerson (the latter two among her many ardent correspondents) and many others had all praised Emma Lazarus's groundbreaking translations of Heine as well as her own verse that appeared in Lippincott's and the Century.But she was fated to be memorialized exclusively for "The New Colossus," her great paean to American largesse, and by Jewish Americans for the few years of poetry, essays and political activity dedicated to their cause. Representative of this trend, Henrietta Szold (1860-1945) would celebrate her as "the most distinguished literary figure produced by American Jewry and possibly the most eminent poet among Jews since Heine and Judah Loeb Gordon."Certainly as far as Jewish women of Szold's generation are concerned, Lazarus demonstrated previously unimagined ways of intervening in American public culture.Nevertheless, her achievements have been largely forgotten; among late twentieth century scholars, Lazarus's contribution to Jewish-American history has been condescendingly noted at best.Though Lazarus played a significant proto-Zionist role, she is even ignored in major studies of American Zionism. And yet to fully understand the unusual literary and polemical pedigree of American Zionism, one must begin with a careful consideration of Lazarus's assimilationist strategies--and an acknowledgement of her cultural force.By far the most influential Jewish-American literary figure of the nineteenth century, Lazarus's reflections on the status of the Jew in gentile society and on the question of the Jews' return to Palestine offer a rich literary and historical context for examining later imaginative responses to the perpetually conflicted nature of Zionism in America.

Readers who want to explore Lazarus's poetic vision in greater depth may be interested in Ranen Omer-Sherman's Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature (Brandeis UP 2002)which at times offers a deeper engagement with the poems themselves than Schor attempts. Omer-Sherman explores the poet's lack of complete confidence in the viability of Jewishness in America and demonstrates how Lazarus was torn between her belief in universalism and her proto-Zionist program, between her desire to assimilate and her pained recognition of her marginality in the wake of Emerson's rejection of her work. As for the poems themselves, the best available one is Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings edited by Gregory Eiselein.

Universal Interest
Esther Schor has done us all a great favor by her exploration of a "forgotten" figure in American history.

We all know the poem at the Statue of Liberty - certainly the last lines of it.And yet very few people know who wrote it, or what its historical context was.As is the case with many deeply ingrained elements of culture, this poem is assumed to emerged whole from a member of our citizen community.

We learn here that Emma was a very, very remarkable woman.Long before women in American had anything approaching "equal rights," she asserted herself into many political dialogues and won recognition for the intellectual strength of women in America.

Her life is instructive to us all - I learned a lot from this book, which is engagingly written and a real exploration of a vital element of our national culture.It's especially poignant in the current political debate about restricting immigration from Mexico...

A Woman I Would Like You to Know
With the words of the title of this review, Esther Schor introduces the reader to Emma Lazarus (1849 -1887)in her newly-published biography of this late-nineteenth Century American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and social activist for newly-arrived immigrants. Schor is Professor of English at Princeton University, a poet in her own right, and the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Her biography of Emma Lazarus is part of a series of books called "Jewish Encounters" edited by Jonathan Rosen and "devoted to the promotion of Jewish literature, culture, and ideas."

Emma Lazarus is known to most readers only as the author of the sonnet "The New Colossus" which ultimately achieved iconic status with its inscription on the Statue of Liberty. But there is much more to Emma Lazarus than this great poem, as Schor convincingly demonstrates.Schor writes in an accessible, colloquial style that shows great affection and understanding for Lazarus. Although Schor's book includes a substantial amount of analysis of Lazarus's literary work, the focus of the book lies in bringing Emma Lazarus herself to life. Schor's biography, while not constituting the last word on Emma Lazarus, fulfills its goal of showing why Lazarus is worth knowing. Even with this book, and other studies of Emma Lazarus, she remains a complex and elusive figure.

Lazarus was born to an assimilated family of wealthy New York Jews who had lived in the United States for at least four generations. Lazarus received an outstanding private education and became known as a prodigy when her first volume of poems, written between the ages of 14 and 16 was published by her father.As a young woman, Emma Lazarus attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson and had a complicated relationship with him, as Schor discusses at length.Lazarus visited Emerson in Concord twice near the end of his life and became friends with his daughter Ellen. Lazarus was a highly connected woman with friends, male and female, among the most culturally and politically influential people in the United States.

Lazarus made impressive contributions to poetry besides "The New Colossus" and wrote influential essays and reviews as well.Her best work, such as "The New Colossus" deals with her vision of America and with the place of Judaism in the United States.In fact her work tends to fuse together these two subects. As Schor suggests, Emma Lazarus became the first of what would become a long series of Jewish-American writers who would try to express what they deemed to be the ideals of Judaism in secular and literary rather than in traditionally religious terms. Schor argues that Lazarus's work shows an interpenetration of American and Jewish ideals, with America providing freedom, liberty, and economic and cultural opportunity, while Jewish ideals expanded upon concepts of social justice and ethics within the American framework.

Schor argues that there was a Jewish undercurrent to Lazarus's works from its earliest stages, beginning with her poem "In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport." Lazarus translated Heine and medieval Jewish poets, and, in 1881 published a volume of poetry titled "Songs of a Semite" which expanded upon Jewish themes.She wrote influential essays which exposed anti-semitism and the Russian Pogroms and considered the meaning of Judaism in American.She worked actively for the well-being of Jewish immigrants to the United States and was among the first to champion the idea of a homeland for Jews in what was then Palestine to escape the ravages of European anti-semitism.

Lazarus remained secular throughout her life, and her own religious convictions can, I think best be described as a sort of nebulous theism.She described herself as an "outsider" to both Judaism and Christianity and, as Schor points out, anticipated the choices and the ambiguities that many American Jews struggle with today in considering their own relationship to Judaism.The complexities of Lazarus's views of Judaism are well-illustrated in a poem she wrote late in her life, "By the Waters of Babylon", the first prose-poem to be written in English.Schor gives a good analysis of this poem, and of many others.

As Schor emphasizes, Lazarus was a paradoxical figure in that she never lost her aristocratic, bearing as a member of America's privileged class and yet worked tirelessly for the health, education and culture of the new immigrants and, with her poem on the Statue of Liberty, redefined the meaning of this national symbol before it was even constructed. For all her activism, Lazarus never quite lost her basic conservatism -- a paradoxical combination that I continue to find fascinating. Emma Lazarus also remains difficult as a person, behind the ambiguities of her friendships with men and women and her Victorian reserve. Lazarus never married. She wrote, but did not publish, a remarkably suggestive sonnet, titled "Assurance" which for many readers, offers insight into Lazarus's own sexuality.

Emma Lazarus has been an inspiration to me for her vision of the United States and for her commitment to an ethical, active Judaism with a deeply secular cast. Schor's book will introduce the reader to an American writer who deserves increased recognition.Schor's book also includes an excellent sampling of Lazarus's poetry.Readers who would like to read more of Emma Lazarus may be interested in the selection of her poetry titled "Emma Lazarus" edited by John Hollander in the American Poets Project series of the Library of America.

Robin Friedman
... Read more