Over the Rooftops of Time: Jewish Stories, Essays, Poems

Notes

Notes LEARNING THE LANGUAGE 1. Stanley Burnshaw, T. Carmi, and Ezra Spicehandler, eds., in The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, Trans. by T. Carmi (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 136. 2. Ibid., p. 138. 3. “HaMatmid,” in Selected Poems of Hayyim Nahman Bialik, ed. Israel Efros (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1965), p. 29. 4. Aharon Megged, “How Did the Bible Put It,” Encounter Magazine (1971). 5. Ibid. 6. Burnshaw et al., Modern Hebrew Poem, p. 169. 7. All quoted passages in this essay are taken from Isaac Singer’s The Magician of Lublin (New York: The Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967) and The Slave (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962). 8. Poems in this essay by Glatstein and Sutzkever appear in The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, ed. Irving Howe, Ruth Wisse, and Khone Shmeruk (New York: Viking, 1987). THE WORLD IS A PARCHMENT SCRAWLED WITH WORDS 1. Moshe Dor, Khamsin: Memoirs and Poetry by a Native Israeli (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Three Continents Press, 1994); Preface, “Khamsin,” by Myra Sklarew. 2. Hayim Nahman Bialik, “Cedars of Lebanon: Revealment and Concealment in Language,” Commentary 9, no. 2 (February 1950): 171–75. All references to Bialik in Myra Sklarew’s preface to Night Watch by Barbara Goldberg can be found in this essay. 1 9 1 3. Barbara Goldberg, Night Watch, trans. into Hebrew by Moshe Dor. (Tel Aviv: Keshev Publishing House, 2001). 4. Linda Grey Sexton and Lois Ames, eds., Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977) pp. 59, 120. 5. John Holmes, ed., A Little Treasury of Love Poems: From Chaucer to Dylan Thomas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950) pp. 167–68. 6. Ibids., Writing Poetry (Boston: The Writer, Inc., 1960). 7. This was later printed as “Surroundings and Illuminations,” in A Celebration of Poets edited by Don Cameron Allen (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967) pp. 108–30. 8. John Holmes, The Fortune Teller (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), pp. 3–4, 11. 9. Ibid., The Double Root (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1950). 10. Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (New York: New Directions, 1964) p. 51. 11. Stephen Henderson, Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References (New York: William Morrow, 1973) pp. 184–85. 12. Eugene Redmond, Drumvoices: the Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1976). 13. For the twenty-page anthology of poems by the Howard Poets that was originally included with this essay, see The Washington Review, 15 February 1978. WAMU-FM broadcast a program on 8 February 1978 on the Howard Poets with readings by Lance Jeffers and others. 14. Edwin Honig, Garcia Lorca (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions Books, 1944) pp. 59–60. The poem “Agosto” by Federico Garcia Lorca is presented in Spanish and in English translation by Edwin Honig, though I no longer recall who has translated the version I have used in this essay. It may well have been done with the help of my students. 15. Lawrence Raab, Mysteries of the Horizon (New York: Doubleday, 1972) p. 56–57. LIFE, THE UNFINISHED EXPERIMENT This section takes its title from a book by a leading researcher in the field of bacterial genetics and bacterial viruses, Salvador E. Luria’s Life, The Unfinished Experiment. Nobel Laureate Luria was a pioneer in the field of molecular biology and teacher of James Watson who helped to decipher the structure of the DNA molecule. I was fortunate to have studied with him at Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory one remarkable summer (1955) when the mechanisms by which viruses could enter a cell and redirect its genetic machinery were first 1 9 2 OVER THE ROOFTOPS OF TIME being understood. At the time I was eager to complete college in fewer than four years by taking courses in bacterial genetics and viruses in order to marry. I had barely a hint then that this subject would continue to fascinate me for the rest of my life. 1. Julio Cortazar, “Preamble to the Instructions on How to Wind a Watch,” Cronopios and Famas (New York: Random House, 1969), pp.23–24. 2. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). 3. L. H. Finkel, “The Construction of Perception,” in Incorporations, ed. J. Crary and S. Kwinter, Zone, Vol. 6, (New York; Urzone Inc., 1992). See...