Over the Rooftops of Time: Jewish Stories, Essays, Poems (Suny Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture)
Wide-ranging and poignant reflections on literature, art, science, and memory. BACKCOVER: In this collection of essays, stories, and poems, award-winning poet and fiction writer Myra Sklarew traces a journey across the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Her point of view is Jewish, though her subjects include science, exile, the future, the Holocaust, the remaining Jewish community of Morocco, Yiddish poetry, the visual arts, and teaching. Many of these pieces...
Search in google:
Wide-ranging and poignant reflections on literature, art, science, and memory. BACKCOVER: In this collection of essays, stories, and poems, award-winning poet and fiction writer Myra Sklarew traces a journey across the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Her point of view is Jewish, though her subjects include science, exile, the future, the Holocaust, the remaining Jewish community of Morocco, Yiddish poetry, the visual arts, and teaching. Many of these pieces deal with personal subjects-the search for a grandfather's birthplace, the death of a mother, the profound effect of a teacher, the struggle of a woman to embrace Judaism. Whether writing about medicine, Messiah, or the first speech of an infant, Sklarew's work finds its roots in Judaism, a Judaism fashioned in large part by the author's own hands. Ultimately, the book is about access, about following one's own curiosity despite the obstacles that might appear along the way. And it is about a kind of belief: that nothing will be wasted, that all that we can learn will have a place in our lives eventually, though we may not know its purpose at the time.Author Biography: Myra Sklarew is Professor of Literature at American University and the author of many books, including Lithuania: New and Selected Poems and The Witness Trees: Lithuania. She is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry, the Di Castagnola Award, and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award.
AcknowledgmentsPrefaceLearning the LanguageThe Landscape of Dislocation3From the Backyard of the Diaspora8Learning the Language10Who Has Not Dreamed of Flying18Yiddish Poetry23Morocco: Gauze Curtains, Round Tombs, Hidden Jews27What Hasanin M'Barak Said33Like a Field Riddled by AntsIn the Afterlife Which is a Library37The Messenger39Getting There43Like a Field Riddled by Ants48My Companion the Aleph-Bet54The World Is a Parchment Scrawled with WordsKhamsin61Night Watch65A Journal for John Holmes69From Alexandria to American via Amtrak76Interview with Joseph Brodsky February 28, 197979The Howard Poets in Perspective89Counterpoint93Life, the Unfinished ExperimentThe Selfish Gene (or, Cortazar's Watch)101The Knockout Mouse on the Doorstep of Neurobiology (or, the Mind/Body Problem Revisited)103AIDS: Latency and HIV Reservoirs: In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time106Human Gene Therapy: Harnessing the Body's Defenses Against Cancer109The Puzzle People114Genes, Blood, and Courage: A Boy Called Immortal Sword117Root Causes: Stem Cells and the Tower of Babel121The Statue Within126A Place Called GehinomWriting the Holocaust: auch ohne/Sprache133Holocaust149On Muranowska Street150Then1521941154The Roots of Resistance: Le Chambon156Instructions for the MessiahCrossing Over161Instructions for the Messiah163What is a Jewish Poem?165Certainty167Crossing into the New Millennium: American University Convocation, August 1998170Grandfather: Lost and Found176Ode to the Czar's Assassin182The Messiah Reconsidered187Notes191Index195
