it's weird...

...how I can jump the gun.


The first Abraham Sutzkever poems that came to my attention blew me away. They had the qualities I look for in a poem. I posted an approving thing.

Since then, I've been reading a lot more of his poems, from his early, middle, and later periods.

My first impression that everything he touched must be gold was mistaken. Many of his poems are self-indulgent and over written. Some are too directly about the Holocaust -- I prefer the subtler touch, the more indirect approach of those poems that first came to my attention.

So...I don't know what to say. I went, maybe, a bit overboard. But that doesn't change the fact that some of his poems are on the highest level of poetic utterance.

1913 - 2010