Glatshteyn, Singer, Howe, and Ozick: Performing Yiddish Poetry at the 92 Street Y, 1963–1969

This article analyzes the Yiddish poetry series at the 92 Street Y in New York City in the 1960s by focusing on four of its organizers, participants and fictional chroniclers. The 92nd Street Y’s Poetry Center’s Yiddish and Hebrew Poetry Series ran from the 1962–1963 through the 1969–1970 season, and featured more than thirty Yiddish poets, as well as a handful who wrote in Hebrew, including Yiddish/Hebrew bilingual poets. Thanks to the fact that the 92 Street Y recorded these events, the Yiddish poetry series offers an aural portrait of secular Yiddish culture in America during the 1960s, when most of the great Yiddish poets were still alive. The material discussed contributes to the mapping of literary multilingualism in America during the period of radical cultural changes and aesthetic shifts that took place in New York in the 1960s.