“Imagining Jewish History Into Poetry” with Yerra Sugarman

“Imagining Jewish History Into Poetry” with Yerra Sugarman

The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, before his death in 1940 when he took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew in Europe, wrote: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Urging us to recognize the complexity of historical events, Benjamin asks that we avoid simplistic narratives celebrating progress without acknowledging the costs: the suffering and exploitation of others.

Poeticizing history requires careful and complex consideration. The ethics of transforming tragedy into poems presents a complex moral landscape, prompting critical reflection on the artist’s function, the audience’s experience, and the very nature of art itself. Yet poetry can play a meaningful role in offering testimony and portraying history beyond the mere chronicling of a moment in time. It can be a conduit for commemoration; a means of bearing witness; and a way of pushing the borders of how we look at both the distant and recent past. It can also be a way of giving voice to people who can no longer speak for themselves, providing unsaid perspectives of those who have been silenced.

There is, for instance, the tradition of documentary poetry that places lyric meditation alongside historical source material and records. Such work enables poets and readers to engage in intimate explorations of events and lives from the past while grappling with ethical questions concerning issues of poetic representation.

How can poetry present Jewish history, promoting Judaism and Jewish values, whether rooted in records of the collective past or in an individual’s story? Is it valid, in such dark times such as ours, to use poems as a means of working toward tikkun olam, the repairing of the world, although the poet W. H. Auden has written that “Poetry makes nothing happen?”

In this generative workshop, I will refer to the approaches I took in writing my book of poems, Aunt Bird, in which I try to imagine the life and death during the Holocaust of one of my aunts. As a group, we will also read poems by Emma Lazarus, Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Miklós Radnóti, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Anthony Hecht and Ilya Kaminsky, among others.

Workshop Costs

• One recorded class
• Link to poems discussed in class
• $36—standard registration
• $30—discounted registration for Yetzirah Members (you can become a member here)

*As we want our offerings to be accessible to all, there is a pay-what-you-can option if this pricing is a hardship.

About Yerra

Yerra Sugarman is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry: Aunt Bird (Four Way Books, 2022); The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow Press, 2008), whose poems earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; and Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow Press, 2002), winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. Her chapbook From Her Lips Like Steam appeared in 2019. She has received a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, a Canada Council grant, and awards from the Poetry Society of America. Her work appears in Ploughshares, AGNI, The Nation, and elsewhere. She has taught at several universities, including NYU and Rutgers. Born in Toronto to Holocaust survivors, she lives in New York City and serves on Yetzirah’s board. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, and continues to write, teach, and mentor emerging writers.