Jewish Poets in the Woods
This is our second feature of poetry written at KlezKanada Poetry Retreat. See the original feature here.
Ezra Pound once stated that poets are the antennas of the race. At this year’s KlezKanada Poetry Retreat, which I was privileged to co-coordinate with Jake Marmer, poets composed alongside the timbres and textures of Yiddish music. Traveling through the weightiness of language and history, the conflagration of sonoric ecstasies and shadows of meaning, they engaged in playful language experiments, defamiliarizing and connecting with the environment, ritual and radicalism, tradition and translation, all dialectically electric and resonant with the rush of klezmer in the mountains of language.
Here are some of the sparked shards and fragments of light, glinting memories morphed through language and sound created that week. KlezKanada Poetry Retreat 2014 will be held August 18-24. We are accepting applications for next summer now!
A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren
We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.
With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.
— Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief