Irena Klepfisz, Loss and the Poetry of Exile, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Fall 2005

Although my essay, Irena Klepfisz, Loss and the Poetry of Exile, is out from the Journal of Poetry Therapy, I still haven't received my copy. Here's the abstract from the Routledge/Taylor and Francis website:

E.A. Helfgott - Abstract:

In her use of the poetic form, Holocaust poet, Irena Klepfisz, confronts guilt, fear, loss and anger. While her poems are filled with mourning, trauma, ambivalence and the recollection of extremity, they are also filled with hope. This essay concerns Klepfisz's early poems, primarily “POW's”, “Death camp”, “Searching for my father's body” and “The house”, which appeared in her 1975 work, Periods of stress and demonstrates that Klepfisz's poetry reflects her ability and her tendency to confront grief and loss by way of the poetic form.

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Keywords: Grief, Holocaust, loss, poetry, trauma, writing
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It's a re-worked section of my doctoral dissertation: Irena Klepfisz: A Life in Print - The Early Years: 1975-1992, University of Washington, 1994, which I finally got out from under my desk last summer.

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In the same issue is my favorable review of Maxine Kumin's Inside the Halo and Beyond: the Anatomy of a Recovery, Norton, 2000.