Collected Poems, 1954-2004

Book excerpt: Irving Feldman is a master chronicler of our collective experience and an overlooked treasure of American poetry. Feldman’s rich body of work exhibits his mastery of language from the biblical to the conversational, his Yiddish flair for the comic, his profound social insight and lucidity. He writes about everything from the Coney Island days of his childhood and his bohemian years in postwar New York to the art of Picasso and George Segal, from the Holocaust to its aftermath—in narrative and dramatic poems and personal lyrics that are by turns ardent, witty, biting, ecstatic, and heartbreaking. Long a favorite among his fellow poets (John Hollander has called his work “amazing in its moral intensity”), Feldman has remained true to the soul’s deepest callings: I have questioned myself aloud at night in a voice I did not recognize, hurried and disobedient, hardly brighter. What have I kept? Nothing. Not bread or the bread-word. What have I offered? Rebel in the kingdom, my gift has wanted a grace. This glorious gathering of poems displays Feldman’s entire career in all its variety and passion, and confirms his place among the great poets of our time.