Poetry after Auschwitz

By Susan Gubar

Subjects: Juifs, Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945, Guerre et littérature, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature, Intellectual life, Lyrik, Judaism and literature, Poésie américaine, American poetry, jewish authors, Poésie anglaise, Littérature et guerre, Poésie juive, English poetry, Literature and the war, Juifs dans la littérature, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) in literature, Holocauste, 1939-1945, dans la littérature, World War, 1939-1945, Judenvernichtung, Judaism in literature, Jews in literature, Jewish authors, 17.80 literary theory: general, Auteurs juifs, Judaïsme et littérature, Vie intellectuelle, Schreiben nach Auschwitz, 89.21 fascism, History and criticism, American poetry, Judaïsme dans la littérature, Histoire et critique, American poetry, history and criticism, Jewish poetry, Jews, English poetry, history and criticism, War and literature

Description: "In this study Susan Gubar demonstrates that Theodor Adorno's famous injunction against writing poetry after Auschwitz paradoxically inspired an ongoing literary tradition. From the 1960s to the present, as the Shoah receded into a more remote European past, North American and British writers struggled to keep memory of it alive.". "Many contemporary writers - among them Anthony Hecht, Gerald Stern, Sylvia Plath, William Heyen, Michael Hamburger, Irena Klepfisz, Adrienne Rich, Jorie Graham, Jacqueline Osherow, and Anne Michaels - have grappled with personal and political, ethical and aesthetic consequences of the disaster. Through confessional verse and reinventions of the elegy, as well as documentary poems about photographs and trials, poets serve as proxy-witnesses of events that they did not experience firsthand. By speaking about or even as the dead, these men and women of letters elucidate what it means to cite, reconfigure, consume, or envy the traumatic memories of an earlier generation."--BOOK JACKET.