Yiddish Poetry and the Tuberculosis Sanatorium - 9780815633792

This volume recounts the careers of three immigrant Yiddish poets of the 20th century--Solomon Bloomgarten (Yehoash), Sholem Shtern, and H. Leivick (Leivick Halpern)--who drew on their experiences as patients in tuberculosis sanatoriums in North America at Denver's Jewish Consumption Relief Society and Mount Sinai Sanatorium in Quebec. The author considers the influence of the sanatorium on the writers' work and the culture of the institutions, which encouraged writing as a form of therapy. He argues that these years were critical to their formation as writers and compares their writing to that of other patients. He describes various aspects of the writers' time and experiences in the sanatorium: the archive of sanatorium publications and the key features of writing in patient newsletters and other documents; the projects undertaken by Yehoash, including poetry, a Yiddish dictionary, and Yiddish translations of the Bible and Longfellow's Hiawatha; the poetry of Leivick, including the “Ballad of Denver Sanatorium”; and Shtern's verse novel The White House. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)