Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971–2021 (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

By: Irena Klepfisz

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Synopsis: Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry (2023)Finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, Berru Award for Poetry, in memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash (2022)A trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist whose work is deeply informed by socialist values, Irena Klepfisz is a vital and individual American voice. This book is the first complete collection of her work. For fifty years, Klepfisz has written powerful, searching poems about relatives murdered during the war, recent immigrants, a lost Yiddish writer, a Palestinian boy in Gaza, and various people in her life. In her introduction to Klepfisz's A Few Words in the Mother Tongue, Adrienne Rich wrote: "[Klepfisz's] sense of phrase, of line, of the shift of tone, is almost flawless." Her Birth and Later Years was a Finalist for the Jewish Book Award and winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry.