![]() We were particularly drawn to Joanna Fuhrman’s “I Have a Secret Crush on Everyone in the World,” Roger Greenwald’s “Why I Am Not an Indian,” Ed Hirsch’s “A Small Tribe,” Jane Hirshfield’s “My Confession,” and Jeffrey Levine’s “Aymat Zibur.” We were especially eager to include translations to increase the diversity of voices in this anthology, including poems originally written in Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish-an approach not considered in most other Jewish anthologies. ![]() We also were searching for poems with a sense of humor and/or irony in order to provide some kind of balance with some of the darker, more tragic themes. ![]() These are just a few of the wonderful poems in this anthology. We were also looking for “fresh takes” on Judaism, such as Ellen Bass’s “Pines at Ponary,” whose trees bore witness to Jews who were shot near pits into which they fell, Linda Blachman’s “Sarah Unbound,” sprawling over six pages, Ilya Kaminksy’s “Dancing in Odessa,” mentioning his suitcase full of Brodsky’s poems, and Michael Salcman’s “Sitting Shmira,” describing how teams of young yeshiva girls watched over the dead in four-hour shifts after the 9/11 attacks in New York City. ![]() “Excellence” was our criteria, as well as not wanting to give any one theme more weight in the anthology. ![]()
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