Alter Brody, American Poet and Playwright (3)
Herbert Kuhner
I first came upon Alter Brody’s poems when I received a poem card from Anthony Rudolf of the Menard Press, London with The Holy Ledger. This striking poem, which is presented here, started me off on collecting the work of this significant poet and playwright.
I met the American poet George Wallace at a reading hosted by my friend the poet David Axelrod at his home in Selden, Long Island a few years ago. I was immediately impressed with George’s work and noticed that his method of composition was similar to mine: taking bits and pieces that do not seem to fit and putting them together so that they do indeed fit.
At the time, I had collected Brody’s and had the poems translated into German. George shared my enthusiasm for Brody and we decided to collaborate on the project.
I am forever grateful to George. He set about tracking down the Brody poems published in journals and found all but one. I got the missing one from the Library of Congress. So we had all of Brody’s published poetic work.
After we had acquired the poems, George wrote a marvelous detailed essay on Brody’s life and work, which includes am interview with his former wife.
My friend Armin Wallas, the distinguished scholar and editor, who published the volumes of poetry by Else Keren, Tamar Radzyner and Stella Rotenberg , had planned to publish Brody and Willy Verkauf-Verlon, but his untimely death at the age of 41 interrupted those plans, as well as his other essential work.
The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance will publish Seiltänzer/ Tightrope Walker by Verkauf-Verlon. We do not yet have a publisher for the Brody book.
At the commemoration for Armin Wallas at the Jewish Museum of Vienna on April 26th Marius Schiener and I read Brody’s poems in English and German. This certainly must have been the first time the poems had been presented since the Nineteen-Twenties of the last century.
I suggested a program to the Jewish Museu
