The Wandering Star of Yiddish Lit

Mersiha Bruncevic at Tablet:

Along with the idea of writing very modern poetry in Yiddish, Vogel also had a specific idea regarding the aesthetics of her work—she wanted the poems to be visual experiences, like paintings. To achieve this effect, instead of relying on the traditional building blocks of poetry which are form and meter, she chose methods derived from painting (mostly cubism), photography (primarily montage) and advertisements (evoking bold colors, catch phrases and kitsch). The most prominent characteristic of the poems in all three collections is repetition. The imagery employed repeats continuously and is used with intention in order to reduce, as Vogel asserted, “the chaos of events to its most basic ordinary properties.”

Two main patterns emerge from Vogel’s repetition of images and vocabulary: unreality and disproportion. Everything is fragile and perishable.

more here.