Description
Poetry. Jewish Studies. "In his Foreword to this astonishing book, Henry Weinfield calls the prophet Elijah 'one of the most daemonic and uncanny figures in literature.' And with these poems, Weinfield himself becomes one of the most daemonic and uncanny poets writing today. The high formality and decorum of his verse produce an unparalleled lucidity and sublime resonance. In 'The Book of Elijah,' modern English poetry, mediated by the inescapable language of the King James Bible, is now the vehicle for an epic tale drawn from the archaic Jewish tradition. But this is hardly an exercise in antiquarianism. Look at Weinfield's 'Praise and Lamentation': in a fluid, conversational style, he has written one of the most powerful and intelligent political poems in recent memory. This is a book to read at Passover—and all year long."—Norman Finkelstein
Author Bio
Henry Weinfield's most recent books are AS THE CROW FLIES, a collection of poems (Dos Madres Press, 2021), and The Labyrinth of Love (Parlor Press, 2021), a verse-translation of the selected sonnets and other poems by Pierre de Ronsard. In 2019, Dos Madres published his translation of The Chimeras (Les Chimères) by Gérard de Nerval, with illustrations by the artist Douglas Kinsey. In 2018 he edited and contributed the introduction to FROM THE VAST VERSAL LEXICON: SELECTED POEMS by Allen Mandelbaum (Pennyroyal Press). His other collections of poetry include WITHOUT MYTHOLOGIES: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS (2008) and A WANDERING ARAMAEAN: PASSOVER POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS (2012), both from Dos Madres. His translation of and commentary on The Collected Poems of Stéphane Mallarmé appeared in 1994 (University of California Press) and his translation, done in collaboration with Catherine Schlegel, of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, in 2006 (University of Michigan Press). He is the author of three scholarly studies, the most recent of which is The Blank-Verse Tradition from Milton to Stevens: Freethinking and the Crisis of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2012). A native of Montreal, he taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1991 to 2019 and now lives in New York City.
Author City: NOTRE DAME, IN USA