Anglo-Jewish Poetry from Isaac Rosenberg to Elaine Feinestein

Overview

This is the first book-length study to survey the phenomenon of twentieth-century Anglo-Jewish poetry. It proceeds by reading established Anglo-Jewish poets against the grain of conventional thinking about English verse. For example, rather than understanding Isaac Rosenberg and Siegfried Sassoon as simply First World War poets, it approaches them as minority Anglo-Jewish poets as well. A similar challenge to the notion of an undifferentiated English literature is made with respect to four other major writers: John Rodker (1894-1955), Jon Silkin (1930-97), Elaine Finestein (1930- ) and Karen Gershon (1923-93). All these poets share a peripheral relationship with English and Jewish culture, together with a common attachment to the diasporic narrative of exile and deferred return to a textually imagined homeland.