Born in Lublin, Poland in 1896, Yankev Glatshsyeyn (Jacob Glatstein), spent his entire writing life in New York City (where he immigrated to in 1914), writing in Yiddish. His poetic career was long for any poet (he published his first poems in 1919, his last collection in 1966), but particularly for one writing exclusively in Yiddish in the 20^th century. While many of Glatstein’s poems have been translated, it is his later work, from the Holocaust onward that receives the most attention. No doubt, these are some of the most moving poems ever written in Yiddish, and reflect a mature Glatstein who has blended the impulse and experimentation of Modernism, with the urgency of a poetry of witness.

But while the subject matter of his early, largely un-translated, poems may appear “lighter” (where we may read “slighter”) than his later work, these early poems are no less important. For it was in these poems that Glatstein boldly pushed Yiddish poetry forward, out of the sweatshops and poetic conventions of the old world, and into conversation with a larger Modernist, poetic movement. Glastein’s first two collections, the self-titled Yaakov Glatshteyn and Fraye Verzen (Free Verse), where the following poems first appeared, were the first two volumes of Yiddish poetry written entirely in free-verse. The poetry abandons the formal meters of previous schools of Yiddish poetry, finding rhythm from the natural cadence of human speech. What’s more, Glatstein’s early work demonstrates a fierce assertion of the individual self, perceiving and filtering the world around him. It is a tone wholly appropriate for one of the founders of In-Zikh (the Introspectivists), who in their manifesto declared they were interested in poets that “created poetry drawn from their own soul and from the world as reflected in it.” The result of this introspection is a poetry that creates a “kaleidoscopic, contradictory, unclear or confused” view of the world.

Translating Glatstein is no easy feat, even for a native speaker. He has a habit of inventing words, making nouns into verbs and adverbs (he describes a sky as lighteningy in one poem). He’ll borrow words from other languages, and he departs from YIVO standards (particularly in his preference for spelling out Hebraic words phonetically). I’ve done my best at all times to honor both accuracy, and the poetic qualities in the work (even as these two goals are often at odds). In the end, in deciding whether to go with a literal translation or an approximation, to maintain a play with sound or maintain original meaning, to preserve his long, often (intentionally) unwieldy lines or to tighten them, I’ve come back to one guiding principal: these poems are good Yiddish poems. If they are not good English poems, I’ve failed as a translator. If I succeed in producing a good poem, regardless of any intentional or unintentional errors within the poem, I’ve succeeded in my most important task.

The City