Whitman/Vitman by Richard J. Fein

Richard Fein is of multitudes, too. Multitudes of heart-felt, spirit-loving, soul-suffering poems, all American/Jewish, too. Richard Fein sings of himself.

 

Richard Fein‘s collection of poems Whitman/Vitman takes a multifaceted look at Walt Whitman as a poet he previously taught but often loved at a distance. He understands that the bard from Brooklyn does not break down barriers as much as he passes through them. He finds that the qualities in Whitman’s work that he had previously underestimated, which have to do with emphasis on the body and intimacy, are more clearly revealed through translation. Able to see through what he once feared, he embraces the courage to trust his intuitions. He delights in the details of the bustling life around him as alphabets that illuminate “–Mannahatta-tokens of myself–.”

 

Richard J. Fein is a treasure as poet, Whitman scholar, expert translator of some of the great classical Yiddish poets, many of whom came from Europe to America. In Whitman/Vitman he presents some of these translations along with his own explorations of the many faceted Whitman. How good these poems are–subtle, sophisticated (but in direct language),sensuous. The interplay of Yiddish writers and Fein’s own English, as they explore America and the sublime Whitman, shows two tongues becoming one! A rare and brave strategy–and witty! The work is a revelation.