Explores the ways in which Jewish American poetry engages persistent questions of modern Jewish identity.
Not One of Them in Place is the first book to examine the ways in which Jewish belief, thought, and culture have been shaped and articulated in modern American poetry. Based on the idea that recent American poetry has gravitated between two traditions-romantic and symbolist on the one hand, modernist and objectivist on the other-Norman Finkelstein provides a theoretical framework for reading the Jewish-American canon, as well as close readings of well known and less established poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky, Harvey Shapiro, Armand Schwerner, Hugh Seidman, and Michael Heller. Not One of Them in Place presents this poetry in a clear and nuanced style, paying equal attention to its historical and its aesthetic dimensions.