{"id":38193,"date":"2022-01-28T01:49:49","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T09:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=38193"},"modified":"2022-01-27T18:07:17","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T02:07:17","slug":"poetic-auto-biography-superb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/01\/28\/poetic-auto-biography-superb\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetic auto\/biography superb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa Richter, author of Nautilus and Bone, joins the Jewish Book Festival Feb. 7\u00a0<\/em>(photo from Lisa Richter)<\/em><\/p>\n

Nautilus and Bone: An Auto\/biography in Poems<\/em> by Toronto poet Lisa Richter \u2013 who takes part in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 7 \u2013 will send readers down many proverbial rabbit holes. They will want to know more about the writings and life of Yiddish poet and journalist Anna Margolin \u2013 not only to better understand Margolin, but to appreciate more fully Richter\u2019s poetic biography of Margolin and her conversations with Margolin\u2019s works.<\/p>\n

Margolin is the pen name of Rosa Lebensboym, who was born in Brisk (now Brest, Belarus) in 1887. She immigrated to New York City in 1906, \u201cspent time in London, Paris, Warsaw, Odessa and Palestine before eventually settling permanently in New York in 1913, where she died, in 1952.\u201d<\/p>\n

Says Richter: \u201cI was enticed by this Russian-Jewish-American woman writing a hundred years ago about myth-making, roots, identity, alienation, gender fluidity, Eros and desire (at times unmistakably queer, arguably pansexual). Her poetry felt bold and subversive, even by modern standards: H.D. meets Patti Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richter does not speak Yiddish, so has relied on Shirley Kumove\u2019s Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin<\/em>, a translation of Margolin\u2019s volume of poems, Lider<\/em> (Poems<\/em>)<\/em>, with a \u201cthorough and comprehensive introduction to Margolin\u2019s life and work.\u201d Richter also accessed Margolin\u2019s files at YIVO and read Reuben Iceland\u2019s (Ayzland\u2019s) memoir, From Our Springtime: Literary Memoirs and Portraits of Yiddish New York<\/em>, as well as other source material.<\/p>\n

Richter discusses her many reasons for feeling connected to Margolin, including that, as Lebensboym adopted the name Margolin upon arrival in New York, Richter\u2019s maternal great-grandfather, born Samuel Margolin, \u201cchanged his surname to the more Russian-sounding Lapitsky to avoid antisemitism when he immigrated to Montreal as a young man in 1903.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richter writes, \u201cI like to imagine him meeting Miss Rosa Lebensboym. In my imagination, he passes his old birth name to her, much in the way one would pass along a string of heirloom pearls to one\u2019s daughter (though they would have been roughly the same age, both born in the 1880s).\u201d Richter notes that the name Margolin and its variations come from the Hebrew margoliyot<\/em>, meaning pearls.<\/p>\n

The emotional and spiritual connections come through in Nautilus and Bone<\/em>. Richter does not claim to explore every facet of Margolin\u2019s life and work. She explains, \u201cThe persona I have enacted in these poems hovers on the periphery of my imagination, filtered through my own dreams, preoccupations, (dis)pleasures, experience. I try my best to give a lyric voice to the most essential, enduring aspects of the poet\u2019s life and work as I see her, and to engage in conversation with those parts of myself that are most closely, most symbiotically intertwined with her story.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she does so in a wide variety of poetic forms, all of which she wields with great skill. Among the recognition the book has garnered are the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry (United States) \u2013 \u201cthe first time a Canadian poet has ever received this honour,\u201d Richter shared with the Independent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Nautilus and Bone<\/em>, most readers will encounter forms of poetry they\u2019ve never encountered before. \u201cA City at the Sea\u2019s Mouth\u201d is a homolinguistic translation (in this case, English to English). \u201cPrimeval Murderess Night Talks Back to Anna Margolin\u201d is a Golden Shovel poem \u2013 the \u201cend-words of each line make up the first two lines of Anna Margolin\u2019s poem \u2018Primeval Murderess Night,\u2019\u201d notes Richter, crediting the creation of the form to Terrance Hayes. And, as the name suggests, \u201cAnna Margolin Cento\u201d is a cento, in which a poem is composed of lines from other poets\u2019 poems.<\/p>\n

\u201cA poem\u2019s form and content are inextricably linked, in the same way that a particular dish can only be made or served in certain kinds of containers,\u201d Richter told the Independent<\/em> in an email interview. \u201cThe same raw dough can be shaped into dinner rolls, pretzels or challah bread \u2013 the way you present and shape the material will affect the way it\u2019s consumed and experienced.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some cases,\u201d she said, \u201cthe form came to me later (the prose poem form of \u2018So Uncommonly Smart for a Girl,\u2019 for example) after a traditional, lineated form didn\u2019t seem to be working. In other cases, the form came first, and the poems later. For instance, the long sequence of sonnets at the end of the book became the vehicle for telling the love story of Anna Margolin and her final life-partner, the poet Reuben Ayzland, as the sonnet has a long and distinguished history of wrestling with matters of the heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe process of homolinguistic\u00a0translation, or \u2018re-translating\u2019 a poem from the same language, is a means of engaging\/wrestling\/ conversing with a source text, and keeping it alive by breathing new life into it,\u00a0using fresh grammar,\u00a0syntax and language. I see it as an act of homage and tribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>Some of the poems were written as early as 2017, said Richter, shortly after her first book \u2013 Closer to Where We Began<\/em> \u2013 was published, but \u201cthe bulk of the poems were written over the course of a year-and-a-half, from 2019 to spring 2020,\u201d she said. \u201cThe original manuscript was much more autobiographical, but once I started researching and writing the Margolin poems, it became clear that the book was to become \u2018an auto\/biography in poems,\u2019 as the book is subtitled, and was much more about Anna Margolin than it was about me. I have to credit my editor at Frontenac House, Micheline Maylor, for her vision and encouragement for this project. Both she and George Elliott Clarke, my mentor at the Sage Hill Spring Poetry Colloquium, were extremely supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Richter\u2019s conversations with Lebensboym\/Margolin left her with more questions than answers, Richter said, \u201cI think that\u2019s a good state of mind for a poet to live in. As Rilke famously put it in\u00a0Letters to a Young Poet<\/em>,\u00a0\u2018Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.\u2019 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever be entirely \u2018done\u2019 with Anna\/Rosa,\u00a0but it\u2019s not entirely up to me. For all I know, she\u2019ll be with me for some time…. I would love to learn to read Yiddish someday so I could read and appreciate her work in its original form.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what she hopes readers take away from the conversations, Richter said, \u201cMystery, uncertainty, history, complexity, ambiguity, ancestral lineage, eros\/sensuality, mythmaking. But if a reader just finds one poem in the book that speaks to them, I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richter will be joined Feb. 7, 6 p.m., by local translator Rachel Mines (Jonah Rosenfeld: The Rivals and Other Stories<\/em>; see jewishindependent.ca\/stories-that-explore-the-mind<\/a>) in a discussion with moderator Faith Jones. Visit jccgv.com\/jewish-book-festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa Richter, author of Nautilus and Bone, joins the Jewish Book Festival Feb. 7\u00a0(photo from Lisa Richter) Nautilus and Bone: An Auto\/biography in Poems by Toronto poet Lisa Richter \u2013 who takes part in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 7 \u2013 will send readers down many proverbial rabbit holes. They will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[21200,9857,21199,21201,387,21202,186],"class_list":["post-38193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-anna-margolin","tag-jcc-jewish-book-festival","tag-lisa-richter","tag-nautilus-and-bone","tag-poetry","tag-rosa-lebensboym","tag-yiddish"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}