Over the Rooftops of Time
Description
In this collection of essays, stories, and poems, award-winning poet and fiction writer Myra Sklarew traces a journey across the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Her point of view is Jewish, though her subjects include science, exile, the future, the Holocaust, the remaining Jewish community of Morocco, Yiddish poetry, the visual arts, and teaching. Many of these pieces deal with personal subjects-the search for a grandfather's birthplace, the death of a mother, the profound effect of a teacher, the struggle of a woman to embrace Judaism. Whether writing about medicine, Messiah, or the first speech of an infant, Sklarew's work finds its roots in Judaism, a Judaism fashioned in large part by the author's own hands. Ultimately, the book is about access, about following one's own curiosity despite the obstacles that might appear along the way. And it is about a kind of belief: that nothing will be wasted, that all that we can learn will have a place in our lives eventually, though we may not know its purpose at the time.
Myra Sklarew is Professor of Literature at American University and the author of many books, including Lithuania: New and Selected Poems and The Witness Trees: Lithuania. She is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry, the Di Castagnola Award, and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award.
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Myra Sklarew is Professor of Literature at American University and the author of many books, including Lithuania: New and Selected Poems and The Witness Trees: Lithuania. She is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry, the Di Castagnola Award, and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award.
Content
Acknowledgments
Preface
Learning the Language
The Landscape of Dislocation
From the Backyard of the Diaspora
Learning the Language
Who Has Not Dreamed of Flying
Yiddish Poetry
Morocco: Gauze Curtains, Round Tombs, Hidden Jews
What Hasanin M'Barak Said
Like a Field Riddled by Ants
In the Afterlife Which is a Library
The Messenger
Getting There
Like a Field Riddled by Ants
My Companion the Aleph-Bet
The World Is a Parchment Scrawled with Words
Khamsin
Night Watch
A Journal for John Holmes
From Alexandria to American via Amtrak
Interview with Joseph Brodsky, February 28, 1979
The Howard Poets in Perspective
Counterpoint
Life, the Unfinished Experiment
The Selfish Gene (or, Cortazar's Watch)
The Knockout Mouse on the Doorstep of Neurobiology (or, the Mind/Body Problem Revisited)
AIDS: Latency and HIV Reservoirs: In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time
Human Gene Therapy: Harnessing the Body's Defenses Against Cancer
The Puzzle People
Genes, Blood, and Courage: A Boy Called Immortal Sword
Root Causes: Stem Cells and the Tower of Babel
The Statue Within
A Place Called Gehinom
Writing the Holocaust: auch ohne/Sprache
Holocaust
On Muranowska Street
Then
1941
The Roots of Resistance: Le Chambon
Instructions for the Messiah
Crossing Over
Instructions for the Messiah
What is a Jewish Poem?
Certainty
Crossing into the New Millennium: American University, Convocation, August 1998
Grandfather: Lost and Found
Ode to the Czar's Assassin
The Messiah Reconsidered
Notes
Index
