Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Welcome to A Big Jewish Blog

"A Big Jewish Blog": the title an homage to Jerome Rothenberg's capacious anthology A Big Jewish Book, which changed my life back in 1978 when it first appeared. (It's out of print, but a slimmer and still remarkable version is available under the less exuberant title of Exiled in the Word. More on exile, words, and Rothenberg anon.)

My other blog, Say Something Wonderful, dwells on the pleasures of poetry, and is designed to be Very Useful to teachers, at all levels. This one, by contrast, will dwell on topics of Jewish poetry and poetics--but it, too, I hope, will be of use to teachers, not least to those involved in Jewish education. Eventually, I hope to produce an off-the-shelf Jewish poetry curriculum for use in supplementary schools and (who knows?) even day schools. This blog will consist of my notes toward that goal, and will get some useful poems and ideas about Jewish poetry into circulation while I scrabble the curriculum together.

I can't do this, though, without your help. All comments and suggestions--about poets to read, or how to read them, or why--will be deeply appreciated.

6 comments:

Mark Scroggins said...

Congratulations on the new project, Eric -- do you plan on getting any *sleep* over your sabbatical?

(PS--hope you're archiving our conversations on pleasure; they'll make a fine sequel to The Sighted Singer...)

Anonymous said...

My friend, Mary, sent me the link to your blog, from a link she received on WOMPO. I'm a poet and teacher of poetry at UIC. If it's possible, Eric, we should meet and talk. I have some ideas about the future of Jewish American Poetry and necessary projects for it.

E. M. Selinger said...

Thanks, everyone! Nikki, I'll be in touch directly to find out about those projects--I mentioned DePaul in hopes that some local contacts would turn up.

EMS

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Eric. I heard about your blog on the Wom-po list serv. It's interesting and I am looking forward to reading more. I loved reading a new poem by Jessica Greenbaum.

I believe that there is a way to syndicate on blogger--if you can easily do that, I would love it, so that I can like to you from my livejournal blog.

E. M. Selinger said...

I'll see what I can do about that Syndication thing!

EMS

Anonymous said...

Here is the link for syndication information:
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=178
Thanks!