Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin

acknowledgments

acknowledgments I want to express my deep appreciation to Roger Greenwald, poet and translator. In addition to his meticulous reading of the entire manuscript and his trenchant comments, he has been an invaluable guide and mentor. To Dr. Avraham Novershtern, Professor of Yiddish Literature, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, with whom I had the pleasure of studying Women in Yiddish Literature at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., and to whom I am indebted for the supplementary poems; his Yiddish edition of the poems of Anna Margolin published by Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1991, has been valuable to me. To Dr. Alex Page, Professor Emeritus of English Literature, University of Massachussetts; Henia and Nokhem Reinhartz; and Brina Menachovsky Rose. Each of them undertook a careful reading of the entire text and offered suggestions for improvement of both style and content. Their criticism and encouragement contributed greatly to the final version. Dr. Anita Norich, Professor of English Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, whose discussions at Klez Kamp, sponsored by YIVO, New York, first sparked insight into the poetry of Anna Margolin ; Shirley Hochhausen and Sheva Zucker, who provided insight into several poems; Clare Recht, for her useful comments on the introductory material; Rhea Tregebov, who edited an earlier version of the introduction and whose suggestions helped refine the text; and Dr. Ellen Kellman, Lecturer in Yiddish, Brandeis University, for providing helpful research material. For earlier translations of various poems by Anna Margolin, I thank Adrienne Cooper, Marcia Falk, Kathryn Hellerstein, and Ruth Whitman. Their work informed and clarified my own approach. My translation of “Slender Ships” turned out to be identical to that of Marcia Falk’s. I was not aware of this at the time; when I discovered it, I decided it would be pointless to alter my version merely for the sake of being different. xi xii My thanks to the editors of the following journals where earlier versions of poems in this collection appeared: Writ 27, Prism International , Two Lines, Metamorphoses, Parchment,and Five Fingers Review. I am grateful to the National Yiddish Book Center for providing me with a copy of the original volume of Anna Margolin’s book of poems. The YIVO Archives made Margolin’s papers available to me. I wish also to express my appreciation to the Yiddish Women Writers Study Group of Toronto, of which I was a member. This group dedicated itself to rediscovering long-neglected works by Yiddish women writers and I had the privilege of working with them on the stories that became the book FoundTreasures. I am grateful to Sarah Swartz for first bringing to my attention the writings of Anna Margolin, and to her and Frieda Forman for sharing research material about her. I brought a number of translations to the group as works in progress, and I am indebted to my colleagues for clarification of difficult words and phrases, as well as suggestions for improvement. The drawing on page xxxix courtesy of Toronto artist Gail Geltner , is taken from her book WhatYou See: Drawings by Gail Geltner, published by Second Story Press, Toronto, 1992. My heartfelt thanks to my husband, Aryeh, for the depth of his Jewish knowledge, his intuitive understanding of the poetry of Anna Margolin , his critical acumen, and his steadfast advice and encouragement. ...