The Distance from  Home at the Boston Athenaeum

Dear Friends,

      I delighted to be talking about my novel  The Distance from  Home at the Boston Athenaeum, a library Sue and I have long admired. It would be an additional pleasure if you could join us for the reading. As seating is limited, I will need to tell the library how many, other than Athenaeum members, will attend. Could you let me know within the week whether or not you are able to come?  

     With best wishes for a summer full of good weather and good times, Dan 

MEMBERS’ CHOICE EVENT: Tuesday, July 9, 2019 – 6:30pm to 7:30pm
10 ½ Beacon St, Boston, MA 02108

Join author Daniel Jacobs for a discussion of his novel, The Distance from Home. This compelling and sweeping story follows Hannah Avery, a woman Continue reading The Distance from  Home at the Boston Athenaeum

POETRY MONDAY: JUNE 3, 2019

GARY METRAS

Please note:  Our poetry editor will be on vacation for July and August and will be back in September.

At the risk of appearing Massachusetts-centric (and how could I not be, since it’s my adopted and poetry-rich state?) I must introduce another of our poets to you on this spring morning.  Gary Metras, deservedly, was inaugurated as the  Poet Laureate of the City of Easthampton, Massachusetts in April of last year.  He is the author of Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: JUNE 3, 2019

Poetry Monday: Howard Faerstein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOWARD FAERSTEIN

Good morning, everyone – and Happy Spring at last, wherever you are (not only you, but actual spring, which we are barely seeing, here in the Northeastern U.S.,where we’ve almost forgotten what the sun looks or feels like.  But the leaves are out, some of the flowers are, too, and the last scraps of snow are gone.

Soon it will be Mother’s Day, and I hope you’ll think of poetry then, in your wishes for whichever her or hers you’re honoring.

I didn’t know until recently that I did indeed know Howie Faerstein and his fine poetry and didn’t remember that we had met years ago.  But now I do know and am glad, not only to make his acquaintance once again but to share his poems with you.

Howie Faerstein’s first book of poetry, which I highly recommend, was Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn (Press 53, 2013).  This was followed a few Continue reading Poetry Monday: Howard Faerstein

Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Rememberance Day


 

 

 

 

 

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Photo: Stroop Report.  Photographer Unknown.  Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons   

“This was the end. This was the sum total of hundreds of generations of building, of Torah, of piety, of freethinking, of Zionism, of Bundism, of struggles and of battles, of the hopes of an entire people – this empty desert I looked around me at what had been the Jews of Warsaw. I felt one hope, and I feel it now. May this sea of emptiness bubble and boil, may it cry out eternal condemnation of the murderers and pilagers, may it be forever the shame of the civilized world which saw and heard and chose to remain silent”

B Goldstein (2005). Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto: the stars bear witness
Oakland CA AK Press

Click here to Read: Richards, A (2012). Witnessing the Death of Yiddish Language and Culture. Holes in the Doorposts in  The Power of Witnessing edited by N Goodman and M Meyers. Routledge New York
London,

Click Here for the Website for The Power of Witnessing

Click Here to Read:  The Holocaust’s long reach: Trauma is passed on to survivors’ children by Ian Brown in The Globe and Mail on April 3, 2015