“In sum, this is a com­pelling assem­blage of schol­ar­ly texts and poems that give us insight into the process and sit­u­a­tion of a Jew­ish Amer­i­can poet writ­ing dur­ing World War II and the post­war years.”

—Jewish Book Council

—Dr. Alan L. Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies, Florida Atlantic University.

“Edited by leading scholars in the field of Jewish American and Holocaust literature, Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time argues convincingly for positioning Hyam Plutzik as among the greatest poets of his tumultuous era—one that witnessed WWII and the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Cold War. Drawing on intricate close readings and extensive historical, cultural, and social contexts, this remarkable collection defines Plutzik as a leading Jewish American modernist who remained true to his Jewish heritage in the face of antisemitism so pervasive in American letters and thought.”

—Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University

“A most timely collection of essays. The contributors are a distinguished group of scholars and poets who comment on the verse of Hyam Plutzik, who should be much more well known than he is. Plutzik faced formidable odds in an academic and literary world that was generally unwelcoming to Jews. Several of the essays in this impressive volume show how difficult it was for a poet and teacher of literature in Plutzik’s generation to call into question the high-modern aesthetic of T. S. Eliot, who argued for the impersonality of the artist. Plutzik, while clearly indebted to Eliot, at the same time believed in the artist’s ethical responsibility and called Eliot to task for the antisemitism that mars his poems and his prose. Plutzik insists that the artist must not hide behind the mask of impersonality. As Plutzik writes in his moving poem To My Daughter: ‘The great betrayals are impersonal.’”

—Steven Shankman, UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace and Distinguished Professor of English and Classics Emeritus, University of Oregon and author, most recently, of Talmudic Verses (Finishing Line Press, 2024)

“Hyam Plutzik was an incredible poet and thinker and a distinct American Jewish voice. This wonderful collection of essays – the first of its kind – provides a wealth of material about his life and verse and a myriad of fascinating interpretations that prove without any doubt that Plutzik both belongs in the canon of American Jewish literature and significantly deepens and enriches it. No one interested in American, Jewish, immigrant, and Holocaust literature should bypass this fantastic volume.”

—Marat Grinberg, Professor of Russian and Humanities, Reed College

"Plutzik was a seeker. He sought moments of mystical insight. He longed to glimpse the evanescence under what he called 'pitiless actuality'. He recognized that much of what he saw and encountered really came from within himself".

—Edward Hirsch, Critic, Poet President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Holli Levitsky, Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University, has authored and edited Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman's Experience; New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literature: Reading and Teaching; The Literature of Exile and Displacement, and Summer Haven: The Catskills, the Holocaust and the Literary Imagination, among other writings.

Hilene Flanzbaum taught American, Jewish-American and Holocaust literature for over 30 years. She has edited three collections, The Americanization of the Holocaust, The Norton Anthology of Jewish-American Literature, and The Holocaust Across Borders.

Introduction: “Memory knows no walls”: Hyam Plutzik and the Mosaic of Time 

Victoria Aarons, Holli Levitsky, Hilene Flanzbaum, and Sandor Goodhart

1. Hyam Plutzik’s War 

Eric J. Sundquist

2. The Universe Is No Consolation: Hyam Plutzik, Jewish History, and the Nature of Post-Holocaust Poetics 

Cary Nelson

3. Hyam Plutzik and Gabriel Preil: Trajectories of Jewish American Poetry 

Naomi Sokoloff

4. “So!” Reading “The Importance of Poetry, or, The Coming Forth from Eternity into Time” 

Sandor Goodhart

5. Hyam Plutzik’s Horatio as Cautionary Epic: Writing the Cold War Everyman 

Edward Brunner

6. Elegy for a Mythic Warland: Hyam Plutzik’s Wartime Poems and Letters from England 

Phyllis Lassner

7. When We Begin with Loss: Revisiting the Early Poems of Hyam Plutzik 

Monica Osborne

8. Judaic Time and Eternity in Hyam Plutzik’s Poetry 

Timothy Parrish

9. “The Great Betrayals are Impersonal”: The Abstract Demons of Hyam Plutzik’s Apples from Shinar 

Kristin Boudreau

10. Hyam Plutzik and the Lowercase Jew 

Rodger Kamenetz

11. Hyam Plutzik: “Value the Intermediate Splendor” 

Jacqueline Osherow

12. “Scorn Will Not Save”: Plutzik’s Negative Capability 

Betsy Winakur Tontiplaphol

13. “But something can be said”: Ethics, Memory, and Midrash in the Work of Hyam Plutzik

Stella Setka

14. The Saturated Forgetfulness of Liturgical Memory 

Sara R. Horowitz

15. Hyam Plutzik’s Rod and Creel: Fishing, Jewish Identity, and the Legacy of American Antisemitism

Maxim D. Shrayer

16. The Outcasts of Rochester, or, The Fantastic Poetics of Hyam Plutzik

Noah Simon Jampol

17. This Is My Letter to the World: On Hyam Plutzik’s Big Epistle 

Jenny Browne

Contributors 

New and Selected Poems 

Index