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The Universe Is No Consolation: Hyam Plutzik, Jewish Identity, and the Ethics of Post-Holocaust Reading

Abstract:A reasonably visible poet during his lifetime, HyamPlutzik has now largely disappeared from contemporary poetry scholarship. Except for one book review, no one has recognized the centrality of his negotiation of his Jewish identity to his poetry. That is largely because, like many writers of the 1950s, he was indirect and oblique in registering his response to contemporary political events. Yet a careful and better-informed reading of his Collected Poems shows a poet deeply engaged with recent Jewish history, including the Holocaust. By supplying that reading, this essay aims not only to reorient and recover interest in Plutzik's work but also to offer a model of how other Jewish writers of his generation can be historically contextualized. That effort is enhanced by the presence in the Plutzik archives of a Guggenheim application that includes a detailed plan for a long poem on the Holocaust that Plutzikwas unable to complete before he died. It is time to redress any influence anti-Semitism may have had on his reputation.