40th Anniversary: Vol. XXXIX, No. II (2021) & Vol. XXXX No. I (2022))
SHIRIM at 40: A Retrospective of Yiddish Poetry
From the beginning, Yiddish poetry has been a cornerstone of SHIRIM. Our 40th Anniversary issue presents a retrospective of Yiddish Poetry. In fact, our very first issue in the Fall of 1982 included the poem, translated from Yiddish, “From the Vilna Ghetto 1964,“ by Rivka Basman. This excerpt captures our sense of loss, enlightenment and eternal connection:
I turn away from
the forgotten words,
they pierce like arrows
in this wasteland
without light, without tears
their cries resound.
They are calling me
those sleeping eyes,
they are calling with hungry hands.
I didn’t learn
this destiny from books,
only the Jews knew.
Here is the table of contents from that issue:
| Section | Author | Title | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 5 | ||
| POEMS | Rivka Basman | From the Vilna Ghetto 1964 | 9 |
| Celia Drapkin | He is She | 10 | |
| Moyshe-Leyb Halpern | Considering the Bleakness | 11 | |
| Moyshe-Leyb Halpern | You, My Restlessness | 12 | |
| Moyshe-Leyb Halpern | Zlotchev, My Home | 13 | |
| Shmerke Kaczerginski | Still, Still | 15 | |
| Rachel Korn | The First Line of a Poem | 17 | |
| Rachel Korn | With Poems Already Begun | 18 | |
| Rachel Korn | By the Lake | 19 | |
| Rachel Korn | From Here to There | 20 | |
| Rachel Korn | Sometimes I Want to Go Up | 21 | |
| Mani Leyb | Shopkeepers | 23 | |
| Mani Leyb | A Plum | 24 | |
| H. Leivick | Yiddish Poets | 25 | |
| Itzik Manger | Selected Poems For My Sister Sheindeleah | 27 | |
| Anna Margolin | Filled with Night and Pain | 31 | |
| Anna Margolin | She with the Cold Marble Breasts | 32 | |
| Kadia Molodovski | Jerusalem | 33 | |
| Melech Ravitch | Let Us Learn | 35 | |
| Melech Ravitch | Good Sister, When I Die | 36 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | A Voice from the Heart | 38 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | I Am Lying in this Coffin | 39 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | For a Comrade | 40 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | I Feel Like Saying a Prayer | 41 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Mother | 42 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Every Hour, Every Day | 47 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Flower | 48 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Burnt Pearls | 49 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | The Leaden Plates of Romm's Printing Works | 50 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Carved on a Tree | 51 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | If All That Remains of Us Is Merely a Cipher | 52 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Yesterday | 53 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | To the Thin Vein in My Head | 54 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | Before the Nuremberg Tribunal | 55 | |
| Abraham Sutzkever | On the Death of Yanova Bartoszewicz Who Rescued me | 56 | |
| Avrom Sutzkever | Pasternak | 58 | |
| Avrom Sutzkever | Tell Me, What Did You Expect to See | 59 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | I Know Nothing | 60 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | You Through the Trees | 61 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | With Teeth in the Earth | 62 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | Last Apple | 63 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | A Moment's Truth | 64 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | Mild, My Wild | 65 | |
| Malka Heifetz Tussman | I Know Not Your Ways | 67 |
A pdf of the table of contents from the original issue is available here.