Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time - (Immigrant Worlds & Texts) by Victoria Aarons & Holli G Levitsky & Hilene Flanzbaum

About the Book

This original collection of essays written by scholars and poets explores the life and work of Hyam Plutzik (1911-1962), whose poetry came to fruition at a time of cultural change set against the historical rupture of the Holocaust and World War II.

Book Synopsis

This original collection of essays written by scholars and poets explores the life and work of Hyam Plutzik (1911-1962), whose poetry came to fruition at a time of cultural change set against the historical rupture of the Holocaust and World War II. The chapters in this volume explore in depth the influence of both modernist poetics and American Jewish identity on Plutzik's richly figured poetry. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States during the third great wave of Jewish immigration, Plutzik's poetic milieux is inflected with the linguistic mosaic of his cultural inheritance. With close focus on his most significant work, the individual chapters bring to light complicated issues of Jewish American ethnicity and identity in twentieth-century American cultural studies. This collection speaks to the legacy of this poet whose work continues to have relevance for Jewish literary studies and poetics.

Review Quotes

"Hyam Plutzik was a poet of great insight who wrote on subjects as diverse as Shoeless Joe Jackson and T. S. Elliot. But, his primary concern was Jewish identity both before and after the Holocaust. Recipient of two important literary awards from Yale University, the multilingual Plutzik wrote an outline about the crushing blow to culture and to Jewish identity wrought by the Shoah. Struck down far too soon, he left an enviable and enduring legacy. The editors of Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time deserve our gratitude for bringing to light a poet of marvelous versatility. Contributors include literary scholars and poets. All are owed our thanks for this magisterial volume."

--Dr. Alan L. Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies, Florida Atlantic University.

"Edited by leading scholars in the field of Jewish American and Holocaust literature, Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time argues convincingly for positioning Hyam Plutzik as among the greatest poets of his tumultuous era--one that witnessed WWII and the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Cold War. Drawing on intricate close readings and extensive historical, cultural, and social contexts, this remarkable collection defines Plutzik as a leading Jewish American modernist who remained true to his Jewish heritage in the face of antisemitism so pervasive in American letters and thought."

--Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University

"A most timely collection of essays. The contributors are a distinguished group of scholars and poets who comment on the verse of Hyam Plutzik, who should be much more well known than he is. Plutzik faced formidable odds in an academic and literary world that was generally unwelcoming to Jews. Several of the essays in this impressive volume show how difficult it was for a poet and teacher of literature in Plutzik's generation to call into question the high-modern aesthetic of T. S. Eliot, who argued for the impersonality of the artist. Plutzik, while clearly indebted to Eliot, at the same time believed in the artist's ethical responsibility and called Eliot to task for the antisemitism that mars his poems and his prose. Plutzik insists that the artist must not hide behind the mask of impersonality. As Plutzik writes in his moving poem To My Daughter: 'The great betrayals are impersonal.'"

--Steven Shankman, UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace and Distinguished Professor of English and Classics Emeritus, University of Oregon and author, most recently, of Talmudic Verses (Finishing Line Press, 2024)

"Hyam Plutzik was an incredible poet and thinker and a distinct American Jewish voice. This wonderful collection of essays - the first of its kind - provides a wealth of material about his life and verse and a myriad of fascinating interpretations that prove without any doubt that Plutzik both belongs in the canon of American Jewish literature and significantly deepens and enriches it. No one interested in American, Jewish, immigrant, and Holocaust literature should bypass this fantastic volume."

--Marat Grinberg, Professor of Russian and Humanities, Reed College

"Plutzik was a seeker. He sought moments of mystical insight. He longed to glimpse the evanescence under what he called 'pitiless actuality'. He recognized that much of what he saw and encountered really came from within himself".

--Edward Hirsch, Critic, Poet President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

About the Author

Victoria Aarons is distinguished professor of literature at Trinity University where she teaches courses on American Jewish and Holocaust literatures. She has published thirteen books, including Holocaust Graphic Narratives: Generation, Trauma, and Memory and Memory Spaces: Visualizing Identity in Jewish Women's Graphic Narratives, recipient of a 2024 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award.

Holli Levitsky, Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University, has authored and edited Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman's Experience; New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literature: Reading and Teaching; The Literature of Exile and Displacement, and Summer Haven: The Catskills, the Holocaust and the Literary Imagination, among other writings.

Hilene Flanzbaum taught American, Jewish-American and Holocaust literature for over 30 years. She has edited three collections, The Americanization of the Holocaust, The Norton Anthology of Jewish-American Literature, and The Holocaust Across Borders.