December 4: “The Psyche is a Labyrinth:” Exploring Identity through Yiddish Poetry Workshop with Danny Kraft

In a 1919 literary manifesto, a group of modernist Yiddish poets known in English as the Introspectivists wrote that “the human psyche is an awesome labyrinth,” filled with thousands of beings and inheritances from the past and present, whose complexities and contradictions constitute “the real life of a human.” If we take this idea seriously, how would it change our understanding of ourselves and our identities, and how might it influence our approaches to writing lyric poetry as a means of self-expression?

In this generative workshop, we will discuss great Yiddish poems (in translation) that present human identity in complicated and fascinating ways. Through close readings, we will consider how 20th century Yiddish poets enacted unstable, ambivalent, and complex experiences of their own identities, and we will experiment with drafting new poems inspired by our Yiddish forebears. Along the way, we will discover new/old methods of imagining and writing about ourselves and our expansive, contradictory identities, beyond the standard categories of contemporary identity discourse.

No knowledge of Yiddish is required for this workshop, and writers and readers of all backgrounds and experience levels are welcome.