Lonely in New York: A brief introduction to a lugubrious American genius

Aron Glantz-Leyeles does not make things easy for the translator or critic. A formalist, he was of a philosophical, lugubrious bent; spending most of his life in America, he was no troubadour, guerilla fighter, or escaped refusenik. Neither did he become the harrowing, post-war poet of Holocaust remembrance (like Jacob Glatstein), triangulating God’s absence with the calipers of Jewish history and the “goyim’s” nonchalance. His lyric conclusions are different, and more deliberate.



More on the virtuoso of loneliness in a blogpost of mine (including some new translations of Leyeles’ verse) posted recently at In Geveb.