COMPLETE POEMS PART 2 (ORIGINAL POEMS, 1937-1955 AND POETRY TRANSLATIONS).
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
1st Edition. Hardcover. First edition, hardcover (9.5 x 6.5”, 24.0 x 16.5 cm) with dark beige cloth and gilt lettering and dust jacket, 1115pp.
Born in the Ukraine in 1909, Klein immigrated to Montreal, Canada and became one of Canada's greatest poets as well as a leading light in Jewish-Canadian culture and deemed the first contributor of authentic Jewish poetry to the English language. His family lived in the Jewish quarter on the Plateau Mont Royal near St. Laurent blvd. along with Irving Layton who both attended Baron Byng high school made famous in Mordecai Richler's "APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ". Klein studied Political Science at McGill University and Law at the Université de Montréal contributing his poems and writings to Canadian and American periodicals in his spare time. At this juncture he was a member of the Montreal Group of Poets which included F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, and Leon Edel who introduced Klein to such modernist writers as James Joyce. Klein won the Governor General's award in 1948 for his last collection, "The Rocking Chair and other Poems'. He died in 1972.
Klein was a prolific writer and PART TWO of the COMPLETE POEMS covers the period 1937 to 1955 in chronological order as well as English translations of poems from the Aramaic, Hebrew, and Yiddish including also Jewish folk songs. The editor has thankfully supplied extensive notes and appendices. An indispensable collection for lovers of poetry permeated with the Jewish-Canadian experience of the early and mid Twentieth Century. Klein was a forefather and mentor to many Montreal poets including LEONARD COHEN
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Item #34374 Price: US$200.00