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24 SHOFAR WITH TEEm IN mE EARTH: THE LIFE AND ART OF MALKA HEIFETZ TUSSMAN A Remembrance and Reading1 Marcia Falk "I didn't want to talk or act like the rest of them," wrote Maika Heifetz Tussman, the second of eight children, of her childhood family. In a letter dated March 4,1975, the acclaimed American-Yiddish poet, who was born in 1896 on a farm in the province of Volin, in the southwest Ukraine, recalled her earliest sense of herself: "I wanted to be a bird-so I swooped and jumped instead of walking. I spoke the language of the owl that made its nest above our roof. 'Poo-Hoo,' it said to me, and I said 'Hoo-Poo.' The stork in the nest above our barn said 'KIa-KIa,' and I replied 'Lak-Lak.' I would hide in the tall stalks of wheat and listen as they made words. The breeze talked to the stalks, 'Ziv-Ziv,' and I would say 'Viz-Viz.' My mother would talk to me and I would answer in my own tongue.... I would overhear my mother whisper to my father, 'What is with the child?' And I would quietly giggle, 'They're so dumb. They don't understand real words.' ... "My first poem was something like this: Kla-Kla-Kloo Poo-Hoo Hoo-Poo Viz-Ziv Shiv-Shiv Moooo Lak-Lak-Kloo. "Mother found it and showed it to Father. My father smiled and said, 'Leave her alone. These are her own words. We don't understand.' (My father was also looking for secret words in Kabbalah.)" 1This essay is adapted from the Translator's Introduction in With Teeth in the Earth: Selected Poems of MaIka Heifetz Tussman, translated by Marcia Falk, forthcoming from Wayne State University Press, 1992. All translations in this essay are by Marcia Falk. Biographical information is from personal acquaintance with the poet, and is confirmed by the poet's son Joseph Tussman in personal interviews, June 1991. Volume 9, No.4 Summer 1991

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