Overview

Translations of selected poems by the Yiddish writer, covering the full scope of his oeuvre. Described by Ruth Wisse as one of ""the most original and distinctive voices in Yiddish poetry,"" Moyshe-Leybe Halpern (1886–1932) was born in Zlochov, in present-day western Ukraine. When he was twelve, his father sent him to Vienna to study sign painting, and during his ten years there he studied German literature and wrote his first poems in German before returning to Zlochov in 1907, where he began to write in Yiddish. The following year, he immigrated to New York, where a diverse community of Yiddish writers awaited him. During his lifetime, he published two volumes of poetry—In New York (1919) and The Golden Peacock (1924). A third volume was published posthumously, in 1934. Drawing from these three volumes, poet and translator Richard Fein offers a selection of Halpern's poetry that covers the full scope of his career. Fein's translations appear alongside the original Yiddish while an introduction by Larry Rosenwald situates Halpern in his historic and literary context.

Full Product Details

Author:   Moyshe-Leyb Halpern ,  Richard J. Fein (Professor Emeritus of English, SUNY New Paltz) ,  Richard J. Fein (Professor Emeritus of English, SUNY New Paltz) ,  Lawrence Rosenwald (Anne Pierce Rogers Professor Emeritus of American Literature & Professor Emeritus of English, Wellesley College)
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.249kg
ISBN:  

9798855805031

Pages:   185
Publication Date:   01 January 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

A Note Richard Fein Introduction Larry Rosenwald from In New York (1919) 1. A Rogue's Prayer 2. Gingili 3. Your Life 4. Try to Get Rid of Them 5. R. — B. 6. You, My Restlessness 7. A Good Dream 8. Memento Mori 9. A Strange Thought 10. In You — 11. You My Wild One, You 12. Isaac Leybush Peretz 13. My Restlessness From a Wolf 14. Just Because 15. Who Cries 16. The Last Poem 17. Who Is? 18. Why Don't You …? 19. Brother from The Golden Peacock (1924) 20. The Bird 21. Zlochov, My Home 22. The Tale of the Fly 23. Considering the Bleakness 24. In the Light of the Lamp 25. You'll Never Catch Me Saying 26. From a Letter of Mine 27. Harshber, the Coalman 28. Man the Ape 29. The Story About the World 30. Abie Curley, the War Hero 31. The Last One 32. My Will 33. The Sorrow of the World 34. Sunrise 35. Who Will Save? 36. Hey, You Naked Man 37. I, Your God 38. Hey, Jew, My Brother! 39. At Midnight 40. When the Sun Goes Down 41. Zarkhi to Himself 42. Zarkhi, My Brother 43. It's Not So Much 44. The Face of the Ocean 45. Zarkhi, Zarkhi! 46. Zarkhi, Zarkhi!... 47. The Dead King's Lament 48. Zarkhi's Family 49. We Go Walking 50. I Ask My Dear Wife from Moyshe-Leyb Halpern: Volume One (1934) 51. Sacco-Vanzetti 52. Evening 53. Strangeness Between Us 54. In the World 55. In Central Park 56. Kol Nidre 57. Evening 58. A Velvet Dress 59. Song of the Dead Nobleman from Moyshe-Leyb Halpern: Volume Two (1934) 60. Sunset on Trees 61. The Hasidic Rebbe 62. Shalamoyzn 63. My Shouting Afterword Moyshe-Leyb Confronts Me Notes

Reviews

""[Halpern] was free of sentimentality and rich in irony, a virtuoso of form, politically engaged but not subservient to any ideology, the creator of half a dozen brilliant poetic personae and interlocutors, loved and known by Yiddish readers but never oversimplifying his poetry to win their praise.... His three books establish Halpern as a great poet: a Yiddish poet, a proletarian poet, an American poet, as broadly and intensely interesting a poet as Heine or Baudelaire or Frost. Yiddishists know this, of course. Some specialists and curious critics know it too—witness Harold Bloom's remark, that Halpern was a more impressive poet, in his experience as a reader, 'than any American-Jewish poet who has written in English.'"" — From the introduction by Larry Rosenwald ""With the Yiddish en face, Zlochov, My Home can be used to learn the lost mother tongue, because Halpern speaks in a diction so spare yet so idiomatic, wearing many masks and having traveled very far—from the Golden Land to the electric chair—as vagabond, poor immigrant, lover, parent, balladeer, elegist and prophet, that (believe it or not) another great poet, American-born, Richard Fein by name, mastered Yiddish if for no other reason than to produce a twenty-first-century Moyshe-Leyb."" — David G. Roskies, author of Yiddishlands: A Memoir

Author Information

Richard Fein is Professor Emeritus of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the author, editor, and translator of many books, including The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever, also published by SUNY Press. He lives in Cambridge MA.

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