From Argentina

Reading Tamara Kamenszain's "The Ghetto" and thinking about identity & language.

Lately I have been reading and re-reading The Ghetto, by the Argentine poet and essayist Tamara Kamenszain. In poem after poem, Kamenszain interrogates the meanings of high-voltage words that bring an immediate and often intense emotional reaction like “ghetto”; “Jews”; “Gentiles”; “ancestors”—and even “Jerusalem”; “bar mitzvah”; and “Kaddish.”

Poet and essayist Tamara Kamenszain

Most of the poems here are spaces where Kamenszain explores her complex feelings about being an Argentine poet who writes in Spanish—but also a Jewish poet who still breathes in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish, along with other ancestral languages. I loved the beautiful translation from Spanish into English by Seth Michelson, and thought I would share a bit of it with you.

Some of the most moving poems here are powered by questions. Here, “Ancestors” opens with a question, meanders through time and space, and then ends with a question of sorts.

Born in Buenos Aires, Tamara Kamenszain (1947-2021) was the author of ten books of poems and four scholarly books about poetry. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, a Pablo Neruda Medal of Honor from the President of Chile, two Konex prizes for poetry and Book of the year from the Buenos Aires Book Fair for her complete works of poetry.

Kamenszain’s grandfather—one of the “ancestors”—told her stories from the Torah and the Talmud. She studied philosophy in college and worked as an editor for the arts and culture sections of the Buenos Aires-based newspapers Clarín and La Opinión.

Then, of course, there was her personal life. “Kamenszain was married for some twenty years to the novelist and literature professor Héctor Libertella (1945-2006), a cult figure in Argentine literature, though the two divorced,” Lindstrom writes in the Shalvi/ Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. “Kamenszain and Libertella were among the many Argentine intellectuals who, during the repressive military dictatorship of 1976-1983, took refuge in Mexico, returning from exile in 1984.”

Héctor Libertella, the poet’s husband

The Ghetto was written in the aftermath of Kamenszain’s father’s death. Kamenszain’s “collections of poetry tend to be highly unified, each treating a particular theme,” scholar Naomi Lindstrom writes in the Shalvi/ Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. “El ghetto, her 2003 volume of poetry focused on mourning for a Jewish father and on Jewish languages, has especially attracted the attention of scholars of Jewish Latin American writing.”

The Collection’s Unusual Arrangement

For scholars and those of us non-scholars who are obsessed with poetry, the arrangement is fascinating. The collection’s three sections are each framed by epigraphs from Paul Celan—also a deeply Jewish writer who wrote in a non-Jewish language. The book concludes with an essay titled “The Ghetto of My Tongue,” suggesting that the ghetto for Kamenszain (and perhaps, for Celan?) was language.

I wish more poetry collections would include an essay by the poet. It does the talking for the scholars, and offers a poet’s own take on what’s going on. But not every poet writes prose as well as Kamenszain. This bilingual edition, published by Veliz Books, is bilingual was edited by the award-winning poet and translator Lau Cesarco Eglin.

Kamenszain gives Celan the first four words; Michelson brilliantly arranges an English translation by Michael Hamburger and and a Spanish translation by José Luis Reina Palazón, which gets the reader into the multilingual mood of this book. I would add that the white space mimics the space between languages where Kamenszain’s work often lives.

The epigraph affirms that Jerusalem, and all that it stands for in Jewish text and consciousness, exists. It simply is. But what does Jerusalem mean to Kamerszain? One clue comes in a short poem titled “The Wailing Wall,” words that also ges immediate emotional reactions from many. The original Spanish—”Muro de Los Lamentos” is at left, Michelson’s translation is at right. I love that fourth-to-last line Ciega, lega, analfabeta, or in English “Blind, bequeathed, illiterate.”

But is she at home in Jerusalem? Here are the opening lines of “Skullcap,” or “Solideo,” which showcase her double identity as a Spanish speaker and as a Jewish writer. For Kamenszain, Jerusalem is the city where Martin Buber is buried, but it’s also a city she doesn’t really know, and where, she observes, deeply observant men won’t look at her. This is how the poem opens, in Michelson’s English translation. Note that she’s evoking Toledo, where there was once a thriving Jewish intellectual community; the poets Avraham Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi both lived there:

This is a deeply personal book, with at least a hundred doors, and it was tough to choose which poems to feature.

A Beautiful Kaddish Poem

I was knocked out by the opening line of “Kaddish”—which like many of the poems here, has an iconic, very Jewish title. Like other strong poems here, it opens with a question. I knew I had to feature it.

The first line here, like the snippet of Celan, is about what is. The simplicity brings power, and both Celan and Kamenszain use simplicity and refrain to great effect. But for Kamenszain, the question of the role of a woman in Judaism is ever-present—not so much for Celan…

Celan, returned to his childhood home with the door sealed shut and his parents gone, leaving him to forever ask what is, who was, and what was. But Kamenszain, whose father passed away decades after the Shoah, asks those same questions.

One of my favorite parts of this collection is the essay that closes it out. I’ll write about it in the next newsletter, as preparation for our next salon on June 8th.

Salon June 8th: Seth Michelson & Gail Newman

I’m so excited to host Seth Michelson, the translator of these incredible Tamara Kamenszain poems, and poet Gail Newman, author of Blood Memory, at the next salon on Sunday, June 8th at 12 noon EST. Michelson is an award-winning poet, translator, and scholar who is a professor of poetry at Washington and Lee University. As a translator, he focuses on feminist poetry. Michelson’s recent books of original poetry include Swimming Through the Fire and Eyes Like Broken Windows.

Newman, who was featured in the newsletter here, was born in a Displaced Persons’ Camp in Lansberg, Germany; both her parents were Polish Holocaust survivors. She has worked as an arts administrator at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, co-founded Room: A Women’s Literary Journal, and edited two books of children’s poetry. She is also the author of a previous poetry collection, One World, published by Moon Tide Press.

Poet Gail Newman.

I felt intriguing connectives between Michelson’s translation of The Ghetto by Kamenszain and Newman’s translation of her parents’ experience in Blood Memory. I look forward to our reading and conversation.

Salons are thank-yous for paid subscribers who make continuing this newsletter possible, and are a wonderful chance to get to know writers, translators, and thinkers who deserve more attention—and to ask questions. Each salon lasts one hour and focuses on how work is made, and all salons are recorded. In addition to access to all content, paid subscribers can also access the entire archive of prior salons. Monthly, yearly, and gift subscriptions are available. Hope to see you there!

And as always, thank you for reading!

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