BRICKHOUSE BOOKS | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

Ghosts of family, of a Brooklyn boyhood, of the Yiddish language and the poets who wrote in it, and of Walt Whitman haunt Fein's poetry. ?'How can I be done with you?' asks Richard Fein of his ghosts, and in this book they are many. There are the ghosts of his family and his childhood in Brooklyn. Then there are the ghosts of the Yiddish language and the poets who wrote in it. The ghosts of those poets inhabit Fein's translations, adaptations, and what we might call his inspirations, Fein's own poems that turn pondering 'a dying language' into a lens through which he can see better hs own life. Hovering over all is the ghost of Walt Whitman, whose democratic syncretism, perambulation, and generosity of spirit are reflected throughout Fein's poetry. More than a book of the dead, however, Reversion shows us how, as Fein puts it, the past resides dormant within us, ready to be recast and live in a new creation. This is Richard Fein's book of life, and we will return, 'revert, ' to it often