Yiddish writer Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010) was described by the New York Times as "the greatest poet of the Holocaust." Born in present-day Belarus, Sutzkever spent his childhood as a war refugee in Siberia, returned to Poland to participate in the interwar flourishing of Yiddish culture, was confined to the Vilna ghetto during the Nazi occupation, escaped to join the Jewish partisans, and settled in the new state of Israel after the war. Personal and political, mystical and national, his body of work, including more than two dozen volumes of poetry, several of stories, and a memoir, demonstrated the ways in which Yiddish creativity simultaneously balanced the imperatives of mourning and revival after the Holocaust. In The Full Pomegranate, Richard J. Fein selects and translates some of Sutzkever's best poems covering the full breadth of his career. Fein's translations appear alongside the original Yiddish, while an introduction by Justin Cammy situates Sutzkever in both historical and literary context.

Note on Selection and Arrangement Note on Translation Acknowledgments Introduction Justin Cammy From Collected Poems, Volume One (1963) Siberia In the Village At Dawn Recognition Like a Sleigh in Its Wistful Ringing Fiery Pelt In a Siberian Forest To My Father Irtysh Snowman Siberian Spring Kyrgyz My Friend Tshanguri By a Bonfire North Star A Haystack Ant Nest Poems to a Sleepwalker Two Bullets In the Cell I Lie in a Coffin From a Lost Poem Every Hour, Every Day The Burial To the Thin Vein on My Head The Woman of Marble in Père Lachaise From Collected Poems, Volume Two (1963) Deer by the Red Sea Denkmol nokh a ferd Blackberries Trained Animals A Poem without a Name [Gather me . . .] From Square Letters and Magical Signs (1968) When the River Overran Its Banks To Leivick Poem without a Name From Ripe Faces (1970) Portrait Firefighters From The Fiddle Rose (1974) Granite Wings From Both Ends of the World The Full Pomegranate Collected Treasures Wonder Alto Cellos [Here I am fated to see . . .] From Twin Brother (1986) [Who will last . . .] [Good morning, woodpecker . . .] [Fate-hairy dog . . .] [Who blessed me . . .] [Gone, the green . . .] [Draw a thread . . .] [I remember Pasternak . . .] [And if I go . . .] [It belongs to me . . .] [Death redeems death . . .] [A woman points . . .] [My unborn heir . . .] [Memory of three . . .] [Good morning, young . . .] [When your words . . .] ["How come you don't mention . . ."] [A distant morning's . . .] [Not even the least . . .] [Ever since my pious mother . . .] [Tell me, what did you want . . .] [I am your abyss . . .] [I read texts . . .] [I still owe you . . .] [The murmur-hieroglyphics . . .] [Where are they . . .] [Not one, not two . . .] From In Somewhere-Night of Black Honey From The Heir of Rain (1992) [Two-legged grasses . . .] Like Sun through a Crevice Poem about Nothing I Seek Those Few People Who to This Day Remember My Mother [Soon it will happen!] From Shaken Walls (1996) [Just before his bar mitzvah . . .] [A special announcement . . .] [It sometimes seems to me . . .] [All that is past . . .] [I know that nothing remains . . .] [I regret that I was born . . .] Sporadic visitant . . . Richard J. Fein Afterword Notes