-Being Partisan

von am 17. Februar 2023 um 10:55
Veröffentlicht in: Poetry, Polemics

Being Partisan

 

Excuse me for being partisan!
As far as libertines are concerned,
liberals assert that what consenting adults do
is their own business.
Liberals, however, are a boring batch.
There are seldom fireworks in their quarters.

Most of the fireworks seem to be exploding
in Conservative quarters.

For profligates and roués matrimony
seems to serve as a cover for shenanigans.
Who would suspect a hubby
who fills an empty suit
of engaging in hanky-panky?

The yellow press is hungry for lurid fodder.
Muckraking journalists lay in wait
to catch secret profligates in flagrante.

Alas, not all Conservatives and Evangelicals
are leading Simon-pure lives.

Not everything is as it seems to be.
As a matter of fact,
as far as morality is concerned,
everything is topsy-turvy.

Again and again a respectable paragon
is exposed as what he has been bashing.

Here’s the rub:
The divorce rate in Conservative Red States
is higher than in Liberal Blue States.
The rate in Massachusetts,
the most permissive of all,
is the lowest in the nation.

Now the Conservatives have banned abortion.
Yes, getting it on the sly
beats the liberal approach.

Alas, the skeletons in closets
of the Grand Old Party are more populated
than those of their Democrat counterparts.

You explain it to me!
I’m just relating it.
I don’t have a handle on it.

 

– Herbert Kuhner

-Vjera Vitošević (Montenegro)

von am 4. Februar 2023 um 18:56
Veröffentlicht in: Poetry, Polemics

Vjera Vitošević

This poem, which I co-translated with my dear friend Vjera Vitošević a while back, has gained in relevance due to the horror of present events. Yes, there are two sides to every story, but there is only one side to premeditated invasion and attempted conquest.

 

A Monster Slumbers in Man

A monster slumbers in man,
deep within him
like rancid fear.
A monster slumbers in man.

Head of a lamb,
stumpy legs, wolf’s paws
and a tail
that can snap like lightning.
A monster slumbers in man.

It lies twisted in sleep
devoid of courage,
dreaming
in a rotting carapace.
A monster slumbers in man.

The days and nights
on this trodden Earth
have scarred faces
in which one can see
that a monster slumbers in man.

Translated from the Serbian
by Herbert Kuhner and the author

 

Some thoughts on the subject by H.K.

Man loves to build,
but there is something he even loves more –
destruction brings about
a state of unparalleled ecstasy!
Inhumanity never leads to humanity.

Inhumanity never leads to humanity.
Mass murderers do on not have
a good side.

All mass murderers are members
of the Gory Club.
All members of the Gory Club
become brothers.
Sometimes they become the brothers
of those they hate most.

-Speaking German in a Dream/3

von am 31. Januar 2023 um 17:06
Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Biographic, Polemics, Politics, Translation

Speaking German in a Dream

What Language Do You Dream in

I dream in English.
I daydream in French.
My nightmares are in German.

Of all the mishaps and misadventures
I have experienced in my literary career,
the following takes the cake.

 

Ptići i slavuji/ Hawks and Nightingales/
Current Burgenland Croatian Poetry
was published by Baumüller Verlag, 1983,
Editor-in-Chief was Dr. Albert F. Reiterer

I had been the first to translate Burgenland Croatian poetry into English and this collection was the first anthology of this Austrian lingual minority.

(Ditto for Carinthian Slovenian Poetry. The book was published in the following year.)

On June 28, 1983, there was a presentation of Hawks and Nightingales at the Croatian Academic Club. Dr. Reiterer composed a three-page invitation for the occasion on which the names of neither the editor nor translator were to be found. When queried about the omission, Dr. Reiterer stated that it was intentional and that it was not his policy to give such credit.

On November 10, 1983, a presentation of Hawks and Nightingales was slated to take place at the America House, for which I had acted as an intermediary. Presentations of Carinthian Slovenian Poetry and Austrian Poetry Today (Schocken Books) were to follow. And a reading tour featuring poetry from all three anthologies was planned.

 

On November 10, 1983, a presentation of Hawks and Nightingales was slated to take place at the America House, for which I had acted as an intermediary. Presentations of Carinthian Slovenian Poetry and Austrian Poetry Today (Schocken Books) were to follow. And a reading tour featuring poetry from all three anthologies was planned.

However, on November 9th, a day before the presentation, Cynthia Miller, the United States Cultural Attaché received a letter from Dr. Reiterer withdrawing from the presentation. Dr. Reiterer wrote: “I would like to convey to you, that due to recent events, publishing house will not be able to send a representative to the reading that you have planned.”

(The “recent events” were allegedly the invasion of Grenada.)

The buffet was delivered and set aside. The guests were sent home and all other events were cancelled. That was the end of my relationship with the American Embassy. I may not have been to blame for what had happened, but I had made the unfortunate connection with the man who had caused the cancellation.

When I called Dr. Reiterer, he in informed me that he had achieved his intentions.

After our brief phone conversation, I received a bill for complimentary copies of Hawks and Nightingales dated November 23, 1983, which I had distributed for PR and funding purposes. I quote, “Regretfully we cannot agree to having the book presented to people such as Peter Rath, who is the owner of a glass and chandelier company that has absolutely no connection with our publishing house.”

Peter Rath of Lobmeyr happened to be one of the sponsors of Austrian Poetry Today (Schocken Books, New York) and received credit for his generosity in that publication.

(The address of Lobmeyr Glass Company is Kärntner Strasse 26, next door to where my paternal grandmother lived before her deportation. She lived on the second floor of Kärntner Strasse 28)

On December 20, 1983, I received a letter from Dr. Reiterer informing me that Herbert Gassner of the Croatian Academic Club had purchased 50 copies of Hawks and Nightingales on condition that Dr. Reiterer desist from harassing me with bills for complementary copies.

I quote Reiterer: “We regret that an uninvolved third party has entered this situation.”

“This situation” must be unique in publishing history. An editor bemoans the sale of multiple copies of a book that he has published. Harassing a translator took precedence over the commercial aspects.

“Always remember, others may hate you,
but those who hate you don’t win
unless you hate them,
and then you destroy yourself.”
– Richard M. Nixon
(Wise words from a man I do not admire.)

You could cut through the emotion
with a knife!

 

Gratitude

I had been under the false impression
that scholars were my brothers and sisters.
Thank you, Herr Doktor, for cluing me in!

 

Colleagues

It could not be said that my fellow editors
twiddled their thumbs during this confrontation
since they sat on their hands.

At the time Feliks Bister and I were having lunch
at the Sandwirth Restaurant in Klagenfurt with Lojze Wieser,
a literary publisher. Bister ventured to say that Reiterer was right
to book me for the complementary copies of the Croatian book.
Apparently being in the editor’s good graces was essential to him.

At that, I should have gotten up, left the premises and said adieu.
I foolishly tried to gloss over that comment, but I failed and it struck me in the face with full force much later

 

Language Lost and Regained

By returning to the scene
of former proceedings in 1963,
first-hand material was handed to me
on a silver platter.

What’s the name of the game?
What sentiment was at play?

Let’s call a spade a spade!
What is the name of the game?

What is the motivation
for such behavior?

Did some take up
where others had left off?

Did the echo of “old days”
reverberate in “new days?”

I ask questions
I do not have to answer.

 

Was and Is

This is how it was
and this is how it is.

It did not begin here,
nor did it end here.

(You could cut through the emotion
with a knife!)

 

Semi-Climax

Not too long ago, I had a dream.
I was attending a symposium at a university.
As I was walking on the campus, I saw
the editor in question. I approached him
and threw a German expletive at him
before waking up.

That’s the complete dream. I cannot remember
ever having spoken German a dream
since leaving “Ostmark” in July of 1939.

After the annexation of Austria in 1938,
you didn’t have to have nightmares.

My next location was London,
where I started to learn English,
and my dreams switched to that language.
A year later I landed in New York.

Back at my original location
my subconscious-self broke through
my customary civility and decorum
to throw a word at perpetrator in a dream
in a language I lost in very young years
(but made efforts to regain in my teens).

The word I dreamt is “Drecksau!”
(Apparently, there is no English word
to match it.)

 

Kärntner Strasse 28

My paternal grandmother had tailoring salon on the second floor of Kärntner Strasse 28, the elegant shopping street in the first district. I remember playing on the floor with a wind-up racing car with a removable driver. My grandfather died in 1935, the year of my birth.

It was my cousin Peter who told me about the deportation. When the Gestapo came for my grandmother his father, my Uncle Fritz and a customer were in the apartment. They pushed my grandmother around and struck her since elderly Jewish women didn’t warrant any other treatment. When Uncle Fritz protested, they told him that he could come along.

Peter and my Aunt Lotte were in England at the time. Uncle Fritz had planned to follow, but he had waited in vain for a visa. His last words to Peter are contained in the following letter.

 

My dear, dear Peter,

When you read these lines you will no longer have a father. Don’t be too sad about that. We cannot interfere with the course of fate. I do not know how old you will be when you read these lines. Now you are nine, and I feel that I must let you know that every thought about you fills me with joy and pride. I can truly say that you are a fine son. You have a good hold on life and I fervently wish that you will continue to develop physically and spiritually in the same manner.

I cannot give you much advice on your path. You are so young, too young to understand me completely today, but there is one thing I want to say. You still have your mother, a mother who is wonderful. I am sure that there is that there is none better in the world today. She is very unhappy. Try to console her! So much grief and sadness lie ahead of her. Be a good son and prepare yourself for manhood so that you can help her.

When you left Vienna, I thought that I would be able to follow you soon and that I could begin a new life somewhere in the world: you, your mother and 1 together. But fate has taken a different turn.

Be brave, my son! You have to be tough and hardy to cope with life. Go your way without swerving and don’t let life get the better of you! Be proud of your parents! They are disconsolate, but through no fault of their own.

If you become a man your mother can be proud of, I have not lived in vain.

Good luck, my son,
Your father

 

The offices of the right-wing Freedom Party were located in what was once the apartment of my grandparents on Kärntner Strasse 28. Now a trend clothing store is at that address.

 

– Herbert Kuhner

 

 

-Samuel Greenberg Austro-American Poet

von am 23. Januar 2023 um 16:50
Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Biographic, Poetry, Text

 

Samuel Greenberg
Austro-American Poet
Edited by Herbert Kuhner & Ecevit Ari
Translated into German by Ecevit Ari
Forthcoming: Edition PEN im Löcker Verlag, Vienna

 

Introduction by Herbert Kuhner

 

In 1903 a boy of seven left Vienna with his family for American shores. Samuel Greenberg crossed the Atlantic on a steamer and set foot on Ellis Island. After going through the rigmarole of customs and medical examinations, the family landed in New York Harbor. Young Samuel’s next location was the Lower East Side. There he attended Hebrew School and assisted his father in embroidering gold and silver brocade for religious artifact.

This boy who grew up in poverty and had the added disadvantage of having delicate health. However, these disadvantages did not dim the brightness of his ambition. He learned English quickly, but he not only wanted to speak it well, he wanted to write in it.

Yes, Samuel mastered the second language he spoke. And in spite of his scanty education, he more than achieved his ambition.

His young and short life was spent in and out of charity hospitals, and after his premature death at the age of 23, he left reams of manuscripts, as well multiple graphics.

The poems of Samuel Greenberg were not written in ideal conditions. The achievements of his short life serve as an example of human endeavor and can only bring about admiration.

Samuel Greenberg selfportrait

The poet Samuel Greenberg gradually achieved a reputation and was published by such literary stalwarts as James McLaughlin of New Directions.

I would like to make comparisons. The poet Alter Brody was born in the Ukraine, came to the United States in 1903 at the age of 8. The places of his childhood were the Lower East side and Brooklyn He too wrote in English. Brody acquired a reputation, published a book of poetry, A Family Album and Lamentations: Four Folk‑Plays of the American Jew and then fell into obscurity. Anthony Rudolf of Menard Press sent me a poem card with The Holy Ledger.  I was struck, by Brody’s eloquence and went about collecting his poetic works.

Like Greenberg, I too was born in Vienna. The year was 1935. In July of 1939, my parents left with me for London. I arrived in New York in 1940.

Greenberg, Brody and I were not born into English, but rather came into it. When you begin a language at a very young age, your approach differs from those who were born into it. You do not take it for granted and that may enhance your use of it.

We have included a selection of Greenberg’s graphics

Greenberg’s poems are suffused with the emotion of discovery, as well the element of color.

Samuel’s poetic work was written before the Holocaust. Thus, we can
ascertain this young poet’s cultural and historical view of Austria, the United States and the world in general before calamitous event.

Here is Samuel Greenberg’s poetry in the original English and in German translation by Ecevit Ari, poet, translator and medical doctor.

Ecevit and I take pride in introducing Samuel Greenberg, the Austro-American poet, to poetry lovers in the land of his birth, as well as to all poetry advocates in the German-speaking world.

 

Herbert Kuhner
Samuel Greenberg

 

1903 verliess ein siebenjähriger Bub mit seiner Familie Wien Richtung Vereinigte Staaten. Samuel Greenberg überquerte den Grossen Teich auf einem Dampfer und landete auf Ellis Island an. Nachdem die Familie den Zoll und die ärztlichen Untersuchungen durchlaufen hatte, landeten sie schliesslich im Hafen von New York.

Nach der Landung im Hafen von New York war der Standort des jungen Samuel die Lower East Side. Dort besuchte er die Hebräische Schule und half seinem Vater, Gold- und Silberbrokat für religiöse Gegenstände zu besticken.

Dieser Bub, der in Armut aufwuchs, hatte den Nachteil einer schwächlichen Gesundheit. Diese Nachteile trübten jedoch nicht den Glanz seines Ehrgeizes. Er lernte schnell Englisch, wollte aber nicht nur gut sprechen, sondern auch gut schreiben können.

Ja, Samuel beherrschte die zweite Sprache, die er sprach. Und trotz seiner spärlichen Ausbildung hat er sein Ziel mehr als erreicht.
Sein junges, kurzes Leben verbrachte er in und ausserhalb von Wohltätigkeitskrankenhäusern. Nach seinem vorzeitigen Tod im Alter von 23 Jahren hinterliess er unzählige Manuskripte und mehrere Graphiken.

Die Gedichte von Samuel Greenberg wurden nicht unter idealen Bedingungen geschrieben. Die Errungenschaften seines kurzen Lebens dienen als Beispiel menschlichen Strebens und können nur Bewunderung hervorrufen.

Greenberg‘s poetisches Werk wurde vor dem Holocaust geschrieben. Somit können wir die kulturelle und historische Sicht dieses jungen Dichters auf Österreich, die Vereinigten Staaten und die Welt im Allgemeinen vor diesem katastrophalen Ereignis.

Greenberg erlangte nach und nach einen guten Ruf und wurde von literarischen Persönlichkeiten wie James McLaughlin von New Directions entdeckt und veröffentlicht.

Ich stelle Vergleiche an. Der Dichter Alter Brody wurde in der Ukraine geboren und kam 1903 im Alter von 8 Jahren in die Vereinigten Staaten. Die Orte seiner Kindheit waren die Lower East Side und Brooklyn. Auch er schrieb auf Englisch. Brody erlangte  einen guten Ruf, veröffentlichte einen Gedichtband: A Family Album, weiters  Lamentations: Four Folk‑Plays of the American Jew, und geriet dann in Vergessenheit.

Anthony Rudolf von Menard Press hat mir eine Gedichtkarte mit The Holy Ledger/Das heilige Rechnungsbuch geschickt. Ich war beeindruckt von Brodys sprachlichem Scharfsinn und sammelte seine kompletten poetischen Werke.

Wie Greenberg wurde auch ich in Wien geboren. Es war das Jahr 1935. Im Juli 1939 reisten meine Eltern mit mir nach London ab. Ich kam schliesslich 1940 in New York an.

Greenberg, Brody und ich wurden nicht ins Englische hineingeboren, sondern kamen zufällig dazu. Wenn Sie eine Sprache in einem sehr jungen Alter beginnen, unterscheidet sich Ihr Ansatz von denen, die in diese Sprache hineingeboren worden sind. Sie halten es nicht für selbstverständlich, und das kann Ihre Verwendung der Sprache verbessern.

Wir haben eine Greenbergs Auswahl von Greenbergs Graphiken beigefügt.
Gedichte sind erfüllt von der Emotion der Entdeckung sowie vom Element Farbe.

Hier ist Samuel Greenbergs Poesie in der englischen Originalfassung und in deutscher Übersetzung von Ecevit Uzunkaya. Mein Freund Ecevit, Dichter und Arzt, wurde in Wien geboren und ist türkischer Abstammung. Daher ist er ein Mann, der zwei Kulturen eng verbunden ist.

Ecevit und ich sind stolz darauf, den österreichisch-amerikanischen Dichter Samuel Greenberg, den Liebhabern der Poesie, in seinem Geburtsland sowie allen Vertretern der Poesie im deutschsprachigen Raum vorzustellen.

****

Petar Tyran, Herbert Kuhner, Editors
Breaking Down Borders – Überwinden wir Grenzen – Rušimo Granice
Edition PEN im Löcker Verlag, Vienna, 2022

 Alter Brody
Ghetto-Zwielicht
Gesammelte Gedichte
Herbert Kuhner, Editor
Translated by Heinrich Eggerth & Ursula Gerhart
Edition Pen im Löcker Verlag, Vienna, 2018

 Penny’s poetry page

George J. Dance: Alter Brody

 

Alter Brody

 

Alter Brody (1895-1981)         Courtesy Jewish Theater Austria.

 

There was a renewal of interest in Brody’s poetry in the 1970s, when his work was included in 2 anthologies of Jewish poetry: a 1974 collection edited by Daniel Walden, and an anthology in 1980 edited by Anthony Rudolf and Howard Schwartz. Rudolph also wrote an essay on the poet, „Who is Alter Brody?“ That in turn led to his discovery by an Austrian-based editor, Herbert Kuhner, who has been promoting Brody’s work, including compiling his collected poems. „This great poet is waiting to assume the place in American and world literature reserved for him,“ Kuhner has stated. „I have a feeling that we’re going to help get him there.“

-Democracy in Action

von am 23. November 2022 um 17:42
Veröffentlicht in: Poetry, Polemics

Democracy in Action

It is democratic to refuse to wear a facemask.
It is democratic to refuse to be vaccinated.

It is not democratic to be born without being asked.

If I had been asked, I would have said “no thanks!”

I am organizing a movement to make birth democratic.
The fetus should be asked whether it wants to be born or not.
If this comes to be, unlimited population expansion
will be a thing of the past.

Scientists who favor mask wearing and forced inoculations
must be brought in tow.

Instead of coming at us with face coverings and syringes,
they should concentrate their efforts on bringing democracy
to the womb and the maternity ward.

It stands to reason that my compatriots in this undertaking
will be the anti-mask and the anti-vaccine factions.

I already see them galloping towards maternity centers
with masks held high and syringes at the ready.

 

– Herbert Kuhner