In Between the Charges - For Ethel Rosenberg

by Myles Gordon

Poetry. Ethel Rosenberg and her husband Julius were executed in 1953 for passing "atomic secrets" to the Soviet Union—the only Americans condemned to death during the Red Scare. In this powerful verse—a sonnet sequence, no less—Myles Gordon evokes her life and death with great insight and poignancy. In the process she is transformed from Cold War caricature to collateral damage, from an old newspaper photograph to a living presence. Written as an imagined monologue from Rosenberg to her brother and accuser David Greenglass—who decades later recanted his testimony—this cycle revisits her childhood in a poor Jewish family in New York, and evokes the horror of her death and the visions she might have had "in between the charges" it took to end her life. As the spectre of Cold War threatens to return, Ethel Rosenberg's life and death remind us of the risks facing all people of conscience in a binary world of "with us or against us," when loyalty to the state eclipses devotion to mankind. If learning the lessons of her history prevents us from repeating our past, then her death need not have been in vain.

"Myles Gordon is one of the outstanding poets of his generation." —Kathleen Spivack

30 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017