Selected Poems by A.M. Klein
Throughout his career A.M. Klein struggled to define for himself the role of the poet in the contemporary world. Deeply rooted in the traditions of Judaism, and at the same time attracted by the freedom and scope of international modernism, he sought to reconcile past and present, community and creative individuality. Whether or not he finally achieved his own high aims, it was, in his own words, ‘something merely to entertain them.’
This collection of eighty-four poems offers a representative sampling of Klein’s finest poetry, while taking into account the changing critical discourse of the last fifty years.
Extract
It has its attractions, but is not the thing;
nor is it the ape mimesis who speaks from the tree
ancestral; nor the merkin joy …
Rather it is stark infelicity
which stirs him from his sleep, undressed, asleep
to walk upon roofs and window-sills and defy
the gape of gravity.
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