Maeera Y. Shreiber is Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah, specializing in modern and contemporary American poetry. She is also the coeditor of two essay collections on poetry, Dwelling in Possibility: Women Poets and Critics on Poetry (1997) and Mina Loy: Poet and Woman (1997). Currently, she is working on a study of the relationships between poetry and religion.

• @fmct:Contents @toc4:Acknowledgmentsxxx @toc2:Introduction1 1"Jewish Trouble" and the Trouble with Poetry000 2"You still haven't finished with your mother": The Gendered Poetics of Charles Reznikoff and Allen Ginsberg 000 3"Speaking about epics": Zukofsky, Oppen, History, and the "Tale of the Tribe"000 4"Where are we moored?" Adrienne Rich, Irena Klepfisz, Lament, and Its Diasporic Aftermath000 5"Unreachable Father": Exploring the Boundary Between Poetry and Prayer000 6"Do not be content with an imaginary God": Poetry as a Preface to Prayer000 @toc4:Notes000 Works Cited000 Index000

"Shreiber shows us that several key topic of Jewish-American poetry exist side by side (and explains why they do so) . . . This has hardly ever been so succinctly demonstrated before and makes Shreiber's book worth reading." - Marion Spies (Religion and the Arts) "Shreiber understands the often-problematic relationship between narrative and poetry, between the historic literary canon of American literature by the so-called traditional authors (usually male)—Hawthorne and Melville come to mind—and writing by ethnic practitioners... She has a firm grasp on these esoteric texts and relies on them to further her nuanced argument... This volume will be a rich resource for anyone interested in Jewish American literature or in poetics in general." - CHOICE "This book contributes significantly to the study of poetics, of Jewish American culture, and of the relationship between poetics and Jewish theology. Shreiber is a terrific reader of poetry. Because of Singing in a Strange Land, I will teach more poets in my classes and will teach the ones I already know very differently." - Priscilla Wald (Duke University) "Maeera Shreiber's book gives the fullest and richest account to date of the ways that Jewish American poetry enters the realm of modern poetry in the U.S. while wrestling with long-standing issues of Jewish culture. Employing a sophisticated feminist vocabulary, Shreiber compares a wide range of Jewish poets to one another and to other American poets with reference to two central figures: the Mother and the Father. These are, of course, unavoidable figures in any psychoanalytical account, but Shreiber uses them to spark new and provocative insights about how Jewish poets seek a place within American culture. An equally impressive feature is the depth of knowledge about religious Judaism and the Hebrew language (as well as some Yiddish) she brings to bear. Her familiarity with Jewish exegetical traditions and ethnic history is reinforced by an extensive and richly nuanced command of the Hebrew Bible. The interplay staged in Singing in a Strange Land: A Jewish American Poetics between poetry, feminism, and religion has admirable authority and makes a lasting contribution." - Stephen Fredman (University of Notre Dame) "Whereas scholarship on Jewish American Literature has tended to focus on writers of fiction, Shreiber calls attention to the achievement of Jewish American poets, which, as she demonstrates, is remarkable by any measure . . . What we find, in short, is an example of what can be done with poems, and for those of us who choose to do this—who choose to read modern Jewish literature against the backdrop of traditional sources, Shreiber's book offers an inspiring model indeed." - American Jewish History