 Hello and welcome. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events at the Mechanics Institute. Thank you for joining us for our online program, Between Worlds from Cage to Stage, with poet Irina Kleppisch, here from New York, playwright and actor Naomi Newman, and co-artistic director of Yiddish Theater Ensemble, Bruce Bierman, who is the director of Between Worlds. Today I play a dual role, one is moderator, and also as co-artistic director of Yiddish Theater Ensemble and producer of Between Worlds. The play we're discussing today, Between Worlds, is produced, as I mentioned, by Yiddish Theater Ensemble and conceived and written by acclaimed actress Naomi Newman. It's inspired by Irina's recently published book Her Birth and Later Years, new and collected poems, 1971 to 2021, which is published by Wesleyan University Press. The play Between Worlds is described as a new play about the transformative power of poetry and a writer's journey facing the traumas of war, displacement and identity. Performances run August 16th through 20th at the Live Oak Theater in Berkeley as part of YTE's New Works Lab production. Information about the show is on the YTE website in the chat. Now if you're new to the Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854 and were one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our General Interest Library, an international chess club, an ongoing author and literary programs, and Friday night, our Cinema Lit film series. Please visit us at milibrary.org. Also, if you are in San Francisco, please join us for a free weekly tour, Wednesdays at noon. After our conversation today, we will have a Q&A with you, our audience, and we ask that you put your questions in the chat. If you would like to purchase a copy of Irina's new book, Her Birth and Later Years, please go to Afi Komen Books, online or in person, and that information will also be in the chat. And now I'd like to introduce our guests today. Irina Kleptich taught Jewish women's studies at Barnard College for 22 years. She is the author of five books of poetry, including Her Birth and Later Years, which was the winner of the 2023 Audrey Lord Award for Lesbian Poetry and a finalist for the 2023 National Jewish Book Award. Also, periods of stress, keeper of accounts, different enclosures, and a few words in the mother tongue, and a collection of essays, dreams of an insomniac. She is one of the foremost advocates of the Yiddish language and its renaissance in the United States, and her work has appeared in Tablet Magazine, The Manhattan Review, The Georgia Review, in Geweb, Sinister Wisdom, The Current, and Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures, and we're just thrilled to have her here. Bruce Spearman is co-artistic director of Yiddish Theater Ensemble, and he's directed and choreographed YTE's acclaimed production of the Dima Gila of Itzig Manger, and the award-winning filmed version of Shola Mashes, God of Engines. He also served as Yiddish dance consultant for several productions of Paula Vogel's Indecent at the Arena Stage and also the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and most recently served as dramaturg for the award-winning co-production with San Francisco Playhouse of Indecent. His versatile theater work as an actor, director, playwright, and choreographer have been seen throughout LA and the Bay Area. He is also a passionate teacher for creative aging and brings dance and theater programs to elders and memory care patients of all abilities throughout the Bay Area. And Naomi Newman. Before co-founding a traveling Jewish theater, Naomi was a concert singer, television actor, actor, improvisational theater director, and psychotherapist. For over three decades with TJT, she changed hats between director, playwright, performer, winning awards in all fields. She directed her colleague Corey Fisher in his seminal show, Lightning in the Brain, and then Mr. Fisher directed her in World on Fire, a poetry music piece about climate disruption conceived of and performed by Ms. Newman and Barbara Borden, percussionist, and Suzanne DiVincenzo on bass and cello. We're also in our production. For this particular piece, World on Fire, she won the Social Change through Music Award at the National Women's Music Festival in 2021, and Naomi has also appeared in our other YTE productions that we mentioned. So please welcome our esteemed guests. We're so glad to have you here before we open the show. So I'd like to start with Irina. It all starts with you. So please tell us about how birth or birth and later years came about. Um, it's a sort of in almost something I really didn't plan and came came about very, very quickly. I hadn't published for a number of years. I've been active in the 90s and the odds on various issues and done various kind of writing, but I hadn't published any poetry and a few words in the mother tongue was out of print and sometime around, I don't know, 2016 or so I decided to look through my journals and collected what I considered to be a new collection of poems, which I called her birth and later years. And I was talking to my friend Julie answer who's the editor of sinister wisdom, and I sent it to her and she really liked it and she, she either sent it or told me to send it to Wesleyan. And Wesleyan really liked it but felt it was too small a book, at which point. Julie said well why don't you do a collected work since the other work was out of print since a few words in the mother tongue was out of print. So I joined it, and I was very happy to have the other work back in print and very happy to have the new work out there. And so it was quite easy, I mean in some ways and was not anything I had really planned on doing sort of the whole spectrum of my publishing life so that's how it came about it was one of the easiest and least painless publication stories I think you'll ever get positive all the way. Yeah, it's great to have this whole the panorama of all your work together in one place. One thing I also want to ask is about, you know the content of your work and your writing it's, it's so much tied to your personal history. Can you tell that tell about how your life story informs your writing, and also your writing style. Um, well, you know, first of all, I turned to poetry because I was very frustrated with English. English was sort of my fourth language. I mean I was, as you know I was born during the war so I spoke Polish that was my first that was my mother tongue. And after the war I heard for the first time Yiddish and I understood it I mean I don't know whether I understood it instinctively but I never spoke it but people around me spoke to me and Yiddish. I heard them speaking to each other. And then I spent three years in Sweden with other survivors and my mother and they all was the same thing they spoke Polish and Yiddish. I was only Polish to my mother, but I understood everything around me so it was sort of, I understood Yiddish but didn't speak it. At the same time I went to a Swedish school and I learned Swedish, and I learned to write. I learned I spoke fluently read and wrote till the second grade their, their, their second grade is about our fourth grade. So I was very fluent in it. I was in the United States and I was deeply unhappy I love my life in Sweden. I did not like my life in the United States in the Bronx, though it was a very wonderful area and many many ways. And I struggled with the language. It was my worst subject in high school. They kicked me out of honors honors English, I was very painful. I went to poetry because I really felt nobody could I thought in poetry you can do whatever you want. There are no mistakes in poetry and nobody could tell me I did anything wrong. So, I started writing rather some rather bad poetry. Interestingly enough, and I think Naomi will, will like to hear this and maybe she even knows it. When I was about 17, I was a pianist in a Yiddish camp called by brick. And one of the people teach was the counselor of the oldest group was a young woman floor of Ferstein, who eventually evolved into Hannah block. And so we were in camp together, the poet, and we confessed to each other that we both wanted she was a year older than me I was very impressed with her because she was already going into college. And I was going into my senior year of high school, but we confessed to each other that we were very interested in poetry and being poets. I was very and we totally lost touch for about 25 years or 30 years. And, and I turned to poetry to, to just be able to express myself because English just was so difficult for me. And initially, and I think you can see this through the book I was very focused on the Holocaust and I was, I have to say and some despair that I thought I would never get off of the topic. But I thought the only thing I could ever write about was the Holocaust but when I came out, I found out I had a very, I had a much more complicated life than that. And, and I think poetry, I think most of us who write reflect where we are at whatever point in our lives so obviously the topics changed, though some remained because history like that you just don't put aside. Don't just leave it behind is kind of me occurs. And, and it took me a while to develop a kind of voice I think that I felt comfortable with. As you personally probably know, I mean, I like to lay out my poems on the page, a lot. I don't want to know how the poem looks, but I also want, I recite everything out loud when I'm writing, I'm very oral, and even when it's a poem that I wouldn't read out loud, necessarily. So that's so I listened to it, you know, and I think it just, I have a friend Susan Sherman some people may know her work. She Susan always said, if you want to change your poetry you have to change your life because your life and your poetry or linked, so I think that that's something that I accept very well. Well, it's amazing that the poetry gave you this incredible voice arena and also a voice on the page, and also vocally verbally. And so we're so grateful for that. I'd like to invite you to read a few of your poems we'd love to hear. Okay, I'm going to read two rather short poems and then a slightly longer one. This one's called a poem for Judy as some of you can see that there's a painting behind me my late partner Judith Waterman was a wonderful wonderful painter. I'm in the process right now trying to catalog with a friend of mine, Gabby von Selpham to catalog her work. So I thought it'd be nice to read a poem. She was very dedicated to her work to her painting, and always sought to find nighttime job so she could use the daylight to paint, but sometimes that didn't work out. And this is a poem when it didn't work out and she had to take a daytime job. So this is a, this is called a poem for Judy, beginning a new job. I will keep this simple, not give it a universal significance nor transform it into art. You say, I will not do this forever. I will paint. I've learned now that it's no solace to point out the others so many others straining wasting unable to do what they know they must do for such losses always solitary and unshared outside the scope of bloodless theory. You do not paint and what must happen does not happen. The transformation on the empty canvas of the elusive marble into the shadowy water or the simple water into impenetrable rock. Nothing, nothing, not even a loving embrace, no special intimate midnight talk will ever make up or diminish that loss for you, or for her, or her, or her. This poem is totally on a different part of my other kind of life. This was based on a trip I took with my mother in 1983 back to Poland for the first time. We, at the time, we went to a small, small memorial for the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw for the Warsaw ghetto. It was a time of, you know, when Sally Darnost was illegal the Pope had just visited Warsaw. So it's very tumultuous time it was also the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising where my father died as well. So this is called Warsaw 1983 Umschlagplatz. I was never in Treblinka, a quote from Heylewik. No horrors this time. It's 1983 June summer Warsaw is tense, but over Sally Darnost, over Amnesty. A small white brick wall, two plaques in Polish and Yiddish, to the effect that from here, Zein and Zegeforum, Kein Treblinka. Two stubby candles on either side, neither burning. The guide lights one with a lighter. The wind blows it out. A gas station pumping gas right behind a building on one side, perhaps from that time, if show on a just maybe it's all. And there are tracks, I think. I do not cry. What's to cry about an ordinary street, people going about their business. 40 years later, tense about amnesty. This street might have been my home. This street might have been the beginning of my journey to death. I must remember it was neither. I live on another continent. It's 1983. I am now a visitor. History stops for no one. The final poem I want to read today is, if I can round it, is was inspired by Chaim God as the Yiddish poet's memoir about his partly about his mother, not entirely called the mama Shabbosim my mother Sabbath days. And I was very taken with the book and I wanted to write about my mother Sabbath days except we weren't observant so we didn't have Sabbath days basically. But I still wanted to write it and I refer here to my mother was a seamstress and she worked for a really glamorous fashion designer and they made all different kinds of, you know, she had different shows for shows a year. And so I make some reference to that. I think that's about all I need to explain. My mother Shabbosim my mother Sabbath days inspired by Vela Grada and Chaim Grada's memoir. By onsus is given under. I knew nothing of the 613 mitzvahs which did not bind me, nor of the three which did. I am sure my grandmother Rikla Perchakoff knew them all. And I have a vague image of her covering her eyes and swaying. Shoshana Roshka loja mama law, and more recently rose in short, my mother and all her reincarnations. She did not pass on such things. She'd given them up, even before she'd ever claimed them. She was more modern. And besides, there were other matters to teach. So by age 11, I was a passionate socialist, impatient, so impatient to grow into my knowledge, never guessing there was no choice for work and rest wrestled in every human life with work. The unbeatable winner. So for us, it was different era of Shabbos was plain Freitag, or more precisely, pion tech. I remember summer evenings I wait for her at the Marshall stop of the Lexington line, bright heat and light at six o'clock. She was full of tales of Miss Kant, the designer, a career woman longing for home and family and love with a handsome pilot of Scotty, the model who married smart, a wealthy buyer, and now sat brazenly chic in a reform synagogue. I listened to eager to understand these widow tales of romance, and then the rush of each season showing, and once even saw on a page of the Times, a mannequin dressed in the very gown mama law had made. All the way up to Rome Avenue we'd walk past the Jewish deli where we never ate. What was the point if you could make it at home. It was a pizza place where occasionally while shopping. She'd buy me a slice past the outdoor groceries, food stands fabric shoes lingerie and stationary stores to gun her road and Jay gardens. Perhaps I knew it was trade. I did, but was not concerned. We'd order the salty one ton soup chow mein or pepper steak. And though she mocked the food. She never resisted. It was Friday. The shop was closed. We'd eat dinner and like the rich lean leisurely back in our booth. And then we'd go to Eva Shabbos. Still, she rested. Laura, you're, you're muted. Here we go. Thank you for that beautiful reading. I love how you paint these pictures of the past you just zooming into this whole panorama, and also bringing us right into the present of the whole. I'm going to smell the Bronx right there. But I want to also mention that of course this year was the 80th anniversary of the war so I get it uprising and just for you to tell us more about how that's such as how it's so significant for you, before we move on today only. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a minute when I think about the 40th and then the 80th it's. No, it has, it's, it's a marker I mean it's a very incredible marker in which you I think I work with a group or I have I actually stepped off of this because I thought it was time of a group that commemorates the uprising every year. It's mainly children of bundes Jewish labor bundes children. In our sixties at the youngest probably, maybe. And so I've been very involved in that and I think we've, we've come to understand that we have to switch in somewhere that is the subtle changes and how we memorialize that there's a younger generation. These commemorations that I've been going to for years were originally only Yiddish and now mostly in English that we maintain some Yiddish in them. It's different, you know, it's different in that these were filled with survivors, when we had these commemorations the survivors are not there anymore I mean, they're now the children of survivors, and now it's even the grandchildren of survivors so it's, it's a very totally different approach and one of the things we've struggled with was what to what to convey to a younger generation what to try to teach them. So I think it's, it's changed I mean in some ways, it's become a more distant history, and that we, and it's not as emotional I mean we don't have survivors standing there who survived either ghettos or camps or in hiding, or in Russia or whatever we used to have that we had those witnesses, and we don't have that anymore. So I think it's, it's, we have to be I think careful I'm always very leery of commercialization. I'm leery of political uses of the Holocaust, which I have for years just sort of cringed about it. And we have to be careful how we memorialize also and that heroism isn't everything I mean I know in my own case. I felt my father of course, got a lot of credit and has always been acknowledged for his participation and his contribution. But my mother never got the credit because he died a year and a half before the war was over I mean I was saved by my mother, but she never got recognition for this, in any way. And I think the feminist movement. I mean I'm sure Naomi knows this as well I mean the feminist movement made me even look at the past in a different kind of where where I thought. I thought very differently about didn't diminish anything my father did but I also realized that there was credit other places or there was recognition of ordinary women who did very ordinary things that had extraordinary consequences. Let me put it that way and I think of my mother in that way. And also, you know, in, in our production of between worlds we're also portraying both the valor and the bravery of both your father who died as a, as a partisan and a martyr killed, you know he sacrificed himself in the uprising and also the strength of the mother so I think those those are important, important things to, to acknowledge as well the women's roles and your mother's role. But I want to move on to Naomi Newman and Naomi I just want to find out about, you know you've had a long relationship with with arena. Tell us about your connection and past and also what motivated you to create a theater piece from these incredible poems. Unmute yourself. I love the unmute. Our long connection has mostly been letters, emails, and zooms. We have met a few times. Well, it's when a traveling Jewish theater, I did a piece called Diamonds in the Dark, a bilingual poetry piece. And I performed two of Irina's poems. It was stuck and that took my mother a few words in the mother tongue. And I loved doing those poems and people loved hearing me do them. And, in fact, it became really the most impactful pieces in Diamonds in the Dark. And at that time, so from that time, I was just a major fan and read everything in the book Ethel Havertz, with Mamluksh, which was in print at that time. But when I did play Diamonds in the Dark, I just had like a urge, dream fantasy, I don't know, stuck in my psyche about more doing a lot of Irina's poetry. So when Yiddish Theater Ensemble asked me to do another project and suggested another ancient Yiddish play, I said that has nothing to do with today anymore. But Irina's poetry does, lets do a play based on her poetry. So that's how it all happened. Can't hear you. Naomi, would you like to share a few of your favorite poems? These are some of the poems that will be in the show. Yes. And by the way, I just want to say something to Irina. When you read your poems now, they have become part of my skin. They are in the play and Bruce's, I was watching Bruce's face and it was so full of, yeah, I know that stuff. You know, intimacy, it's an amazing intimacy. I'll start with a beautiful love poem. I set it at my beloved Barbara Borden's birthday. I set it to her because I think it is so touching and deep. And we call it the tree dream. Last night I dreamt I was a god and lifeless tree. Then you climbed into me, gymnast. You were calm so serious. As you wrapped your legs around my trunk and pressed your body to me. Oh my goodness, I've been sick. It will come back and press your body and wherever your human skin touched my rough bark. I sprouted branches then lush with leaves. I became all green and silver, frail like tinsel. It's so strange when you know I've been performing that poem in rehearsal. But now that I was listening to it, I got nervous. Okay. A few words in the mother tongue. Lemusche, for example. Dekuva, the whore. A woman who acknowledges her passion. Dene, the Jewish woman, ignorant, overbearing. Let's face it, every woman is one. Diente, the gossip, the busybody, who knows what's what and is never caught off guard. De lesbians, the one with the roommate, though we never use the word. Thus viable, the wife or the little woman. It isn't their thing at home where she does everything to keep Yiddish kind of life. Yiddish kind of way of being Jewish, always arguable. In Mark, where she buys de kartoffel and hal, yes, potatoes and hal. De kartoffel, the material counterpart of Yiddish kind. Missybellis, with onions that bring ternsudioide. Tears to her eyes when she sees how little it all is. Veineke, when veineke less and less. De hal, braided veer her vaterhassen, like her hair. Veineke, when she was as a sheinmaker. Lange schwarz ho, the long schwarz ho. At Freyholem, her old wife still felt her place in the world under the hot weather. And she is afraid, so afraid of the words, kurve, jedne, gente, that's veineke, variable. Sie holen ihr Ort, die Welt, der Reine, die Heine, der Mark. Am meidu holen, a kurve holen, a jedne holen, a jeineke holen, a jeineke holen, a vibe holen, die holen, die langen schwarz ho, sie holen, sie holen, sie holen. Thank you, Naomi. That was a surprise. I was waiting for it between worlds, but also this is also one of the most powerful poems in this collection and also in this theater piece. Identity and assignment and so gorgeous in both the English and the Yiddish parallel. And I want to turn to Bruce to talk to you about, you know, what inspired you to bring this work to the stage, the themes that most, you know, spoke to you about translating from poetry to theater form and what what influenced you in in in this work and also in in the theater to make other plays or other styles that you're bringing in to make the poetry come alive. Yeah, well, when Naomi and I initially discussed and Naomi proposed doing a collection of arena clubfish's work. I didn't do anything really Naomi asked I have been following Naomi and a traveling Jewish theater since my college days and Santa Cruz and taking trips up to see a traveling Jewish theater and specifically their work. And with the beautiful Yiddish language and poetry and the simplicity and imagination. And I wanted to learn these things actually I really wanted to study with Naomi theater in some way, and no better way to study than to do a play because you're going to go through hell, and you're going to go through blood and a lot of sweat. Not to the other side. Wow. And I really feel we've come out into this beautiful creation. Like Naomi said I was smiling so much when it ran I was reading her poem because we were just working on that poem last night. And it's so fresh every word every image in my head this is why I come to theater is it's my university. This is I learn about poets I learned, you know, I learned about things about the war so ghetto I had no idea and about the bond and this is why I come to theater and and early on I was asking well what form would best hold this play would it be and as a theater director I love different forms I love Stanislavsky method Meyer hold. And, of course, as a director I hold a special feelings for Bertolt Brecht. And I kind of imagine I wonder how it feels about Brecht, and this style of storytelling that is meant to jostle an audience and to wake them up, and to show at every moment of the character this is Brecht's theory of their important decisions in life what important decisions. The father made that rose made that Judith made and to really highlight those. As a director sometimes you have the habit of you can hide and let all the actors be vulnerable and let all the actors do the plumbing inside work. Naomi caught me early because I was asking what is this piece mean to you and what does this mean to you and Naomi turned it on me and she said what is this piece mean to you. And I really had to think about that. And, to me, I really related to Irena's writings on many levels, but especially about feeling as a queer person, being an outsider, or feeling like an outsider, my whole life. And I almost feel like I found a friend and Irena who understood that feeling of being an outsider. The pain of being an outsider, but also the special position and outsider has to observe. And that that has given me a lot of gifts in my life and that people on the fringe be they Jewish or queer often have that position of walking in between worlds, and giving a very special perspective and I think wisdom into the world. And I hope that answered your question. Yeah, there's, there's so many potent themes that are in your work arena and that we brought into the play. When we talking about the Holocaust, even in the in the poem but shared where we're exploring, you're exploring a dedication to those who have died and then also to those who have survived and bridging these two worlds together in one poem so so rich so deep and so gorgeous and I just wanted to talk about some of the other themes the immigrant, the immigrant experience which is so potent today, and also identity so just want to open up the conversation about these themes. As we've been, we've been talking about them and hearing them and in the poems. Naomi Bruce, Irena. Well, one of the things I dedicate my work to is my parents, who are my father from Poland, my mother from Lithuania. They were bundes and Yiddishists and unlike a lot of immigrants, they were not in trance with melting into the American melting pot. They were very, they loved the Yiddish language, they did not speak it, so we would not understand what they were saying, they spoke it, so we would understand and we went to Yiddish school and it really tuned my brain into a receptivity for foreign languages and for, as Bruce talked about, immigrants living on the outside because my parents always live actually between two or three worlds. My father started Yiddish culture centers and my mother loved poetry and the songs and Irena, she loved the poem. My mother, she was, she always quoted it to me and so it gave me an openness to Yiddish, but also to other languages. I learned other languages quite not beautifully, but I spoke Italian, I learned Italian and French and some German when I was singing and when I traveled. So Yiddish just went into my psyche in a very deep place. I think I went off the question, but yeah. Another theme that strikes deep, and I think it strikes deeper everyone in the cast and, and most artists is this struggle between having to work and doing their art, which is so, so honestly articulated in Irena's poems and everybody feels it. That schizophrenia that sometimes artists have to split themselves to survive to pay the rent and to do their art and that's a theme, a portion that Naomi brought into the play. And in fact, I have a question while I have Irena here that there's this moment that we take into play of young Irena deciding making a choice to call in sick and stay home and and and read the book that she's reading is the man in the whale I'm assuming that's a booby dick. And there's an outburst from the mother rose that's very startling and very curious. It just feels like there's so much trauma in it and in the poem, Irena describes rose the mother pacing the apartment like a, I think wild savage. And then bursting into the room to young Irena who's reading who called in sick saying get up, get up now. And I'm just so curious, I would love to ask Irena what was under that was it that she was afraid of you losing the money of losing the job of lying to the boss I wonder what was under that. Well, that's interesting. I mean, that's actually, that's from the poem context is one of the sections of the work of the poem context and it's about partly the begins with my much older self, doing a job that I really don't want to be doing. That, I mean, it was funny because I was just talking to my friend Gabby about this particular episode. That's that you're talking about. I think I wrote that from a much more adult point of view in that I'm totally sympathetic with my younger self. But having also experienced, I mean, when we first came to the United States, we were really poor. I mean, we were sharing an apartment or one bedroom apartment that costs $41 a month that my mother couldn't afford. So we were living in the living room and somebody else was living in the bedroom. And still, you know, I know other people have it even worse and we were but we did that for about four years and she was trying to live on. You know, alterations, you know, raising and lowering hams or tightening and loosening waistlines, you know, this was in those days this is 495051 52. This is like 25 cents, you know, to do the ham or it was really, it was really tough for her. What did I know I mean I was just a kid I was eight nine 10 years old. I think my mother was always very conscious that you can't just be glib about economics you can't be this frivolous you cannot, you know that life is tough, and you've got to be tough. She, I think, in many ways, I mean as I grew up, I think, you know the thing that I think we all experiences there are certain defenses that really work at certain times but they don't really work at later times or different times. And I think there was that that she didn't really totally see a changing circumstance that maybe it wouldn't have been that intense but I think she thought that I couldn't afford to be this way. I think that she was really, I mean that she was, she was angry because and the way the scene ends is that I hear her working in the kitchen, cutting the material for the next client, you know that she work, you don't pick when you decide to want to work. You don't pick that, you know you have to, you have to learn that. And that's, you know, whether she taught it to me the right way or the wrong way is another question, but I think that's what was underneath that that I certainly didn't understand at the time that it happened. The context of that whole long poem, looking back and looking at the various kind of pushes that economic pushes I mean there were times when I was, when I wrote that I wrote that poem context at a time when I had lost my only full time teaching I had one full time teaching job after grad, after graduate school for four years, and then I was a budgetary cut. The recession started in New York and they had to be let go all their untenured faculty and that was the end I had been promised basically 10 year if I finished my PhD and I did. And next year I got a terminal letter. And I was very, you know, not only did I dislike graduate school but I did it for the sake of security. I was kind of pissed off that I had to do I had to go back to a lot of office work. And in this particular thing where I was proofreading, you know, this was actually a Yiddish text with someone. It wasn't a mechanical job it wasn't what I was, you know, what I had trained for. So I was thinking back about my whole history about money and economics and Howard influences and I think that whole poem is about that, you know, and what you say about that split. And I think it was a very Judy was very important in my life because she was like the first person I met, who was the opposite of what my mother was doing she Judy was like, Judy didn't worry about what would happen 10 years from now. She said I have to paint I'm going to paint now if I'll be poor I'll be poor I mean she didn't she didn't have this thing about. I don't know that I'm sure it's not only Jewish where you want to have something to fall back on I mean artists always hear that from parents and friends you need something to fall back on because you'll never make money on your art right. And Judy didn't think that way I just never met anybody who was so indifferent. I mean, she suffered with it I mean we were the two of us we didn't we weren't very economically great together. And she had to sometimes sacrifice and work during the day which she hated I mean she really she last I mean decade of her life she did do evening work, which was what her ideal I mean she taught evening classes and that kind of thing so she had the day for but when that context isn't about that when you don't have choices and you've got to do it and I think that was what my mother wanted to sort of convey to me in a very kind of really, you know frustrated she was not a very articulate person. In terms of self knowledge or whatever. You know it's get up now it doesn't matter you don't want to go you don't like it, the weather isn't good you want to read too bad going work you have to know how to do that. Yeah it's one I have to say I don't have very many poems that I particularly look back on that's one of the poems I do look back on context I mean I think it's a. I think I did a lot of things in there that I wanted to do and manage to do that in a way that I really liked. You know, and I think that whole thing about I did my honest thesis on novel so I was very into will be different. And so and Melville so I sort of it got in there in that poem. Right well we have the benefits of seeing Judy's beautiful work behind you that gorgeous painting and also having your, your poetry as well. I'd like to ask both Naomi and arena to do another reading. And also, I think Naomi you're reading the poetry about today I feel hopeful and there's some wonderful things to say about the role of the poet and that poet. Today, I felt hopeful as I know close to the earth and turned it inch by inch sifting the soil clearing the way for roots of vegetables. I felt so hopeful that with repeated years and efforts, the monotony of daily motion of bending. And someday the earth would be uncluttered. The debris clear. There is I know no reason for such hope for nothing destroyed is ever made up or restored to us. In the earth are buried histories irretrievable. Yeah, what for me can justify any of our emotions. Like the water colors from Buchenwald. Imagine the stench the sound of the place yet someone felt a need to paint and did. So do not ask me to explain why I draw meaning and strength from these common gestures. Why today, my hope is on wavering solid as if I'd never lost it and never would again as if those dying angry or stunned at this stupidity of it could. Could be revived as if their mortal wounds could heal as if their hunger could be outlived as if they were not dying strangers to others strangers to themselves. Isn't there a few more lines on that one. No. Oh, did you realize that gorgeous. Well, on wavering on wavering hope. Incredible arena. Do you want to get it with another one. I read one of my flower poems it's called a beautiful on in bloom, and it's dedicated to a wonderful, wonderful poet Diana blessy, an Argentinian poet that I met many years ago. And things were not so great in Argentina at the time, as they usually aren't in Argentina anyway. This is called a beautiful on in bloom a beautiful on is a flowering indoor maple a house plant. Cultivated inside out of the bounds of nature. It's stubborn on the windowsill six winters and springs resisting water, sun, all research care. It would not give beyond its leaves. Today, in the morning light, the sudden color asserts itself among the spotted green, and I paused before another empty day and wonder at its wild looming. It leans against the sun warm glass, its blossoms firm on the thick stems, as if its roots absorb the knowledge that there is no other place that memory is only pain that even here. Now, we must burst forth with orange flowers with savage use of our captivity. Thank you, Irina. Thank you Naomi for the use very beautiful uplifting poems of hope and rejuvenation. I'd like to also bring in a few of the questions we have from the Q amp a question from Jesse. Is there a translation of Moby Dick into English. I have no idea but I wouldn't be surprised if there was. I'm going to go to Evo and put that question in the search. Also from Marsha. Irina, how did you feel when you found out that a play was being written about you. Well, I have to admit that at the beginning I kind of couldn't take it that seriously. I mean, it's like, it's very surreal, I have to say it's very surreal. I, I feel the same about the book. I mean it's very difficult to look at when I was had to proofread the galleys for the book to go back 50 years I mean it's just, I was like another I was like another person when I started this. So it's, it's very much to a certain extent there's a kind of distance that I, you know, that I feel about it. It was my life, but I don't know, I mean, quite, I can't quite grasp it, I have to say. It's a bit surreal. I mean, of course, I'm very honored and I'm very, very flattered. I mean I just find it amazing. What I'm really happy about is that I believe that the, you know, those of you like Naomi and Bruce have recognized sort of the, some of the oral quality of my writing which I'm very attached to I'm really interested in voice I'm interested in exploring different voices, whether it's monkeys or whether it's Palestinians or just, or Yiddish I mean I just, I've always been interested in that oral quality. Not all of my poems are that way but a lot are. And, and so I can see that there's a, there's a push kind of because, I mean, it was interesting when I first saw Naomi the first time I went to the West Coast and I saw her do. I was just stunned. I mean, because, I mean, I, I don't act. And she like just embody this poem in this incredible way that was like beyond the words. And that's always I think what we do even when we don't perform poetry but when we just read it we dig into underneath. You know there's a subtext and there's a super text and all of these kinds of things that I think I'm very conscious of. And I said this once a couple of times I mean I was influenced by two oral traditions and it was the Shula, my Yiddish Shula encouraged us memorizing poetry. Now it was all rhymed and it was sort of, it was the sweatshirt poets. And it was very simple but we had to memorize it. English poetry and public school just didn't mean anything to me I mean we had to read the ancient I don't even know what the hell it was about what anything, but when I went to high school, when I got to high school I read Robert Browning's for the first time my last Duchess. And that's a dramatic monologue in which there's this mysterious story behind the poem is that his last Duchess what happened to the other judges is how many were there I mean it was very intriguing to me and I think I between both those traditions are oral traditions I mean you sort of envision a dramatic moment and someone speaking. You sort of plunge into it and I always liked that and I tried to do that and some of my work on sort of duplicate that anyway. So, it doesn't seem. I don't think, let's say, I don't think it's odd to me that some of the poetry is adaptable to this stage. But thinking of it as a life story is kind of surreal. Sort of different I could see the different pieces you know being on stage and being recited but it's hard for me to see it as a kind of work. I just want to also jump off from that and Bruce could you just talk about how you're animating the poetry because we've got an original score we've got an ensemble, the characters, can you want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So enjoyable to create to stage this story and and the poetry and the, the economy of words helps me to stage things in an economical way, and to hit the important images and relationships so I'm really trying to tell the story through relationships and distances and where the father is in the scene where Michael is, and one, one of the things that I keep wondering. Again, is, Irena, you describe the embrace of you and your mother as a fatal embrace in one of your poems and I put that out to the actors and to Naomi what it what is that exactly that fatal embrace. So we've been trying to create that. What that meant that anyway, things like those and memory monuments those are things that just stick in my mind that I love to create and find a way of creating on stage those memory monuments that Irena describes some of her work as I love the flower poems we call them the flower poems there's so hope and and and hope. And I love staging those and and and with you with Naomi I almost just leave her alone she's, she's an archive of of these poems in the world just in her body. And I love to see just what she does, you know as a director I want to do complicated, sophisticated, she takes two chairs and it's a whole aria, it's a whole piece. So a lot of it is just following the instincts of Naomi and staging story, how to stage story. I'd like to also just give acknowledgement to our whole cast, some of which some of them are online although we're in a webinar. So Naomi Newman is playing arena as the poet today writing. So instead is the young arena in different ages of stages and ages of her life. Maria Lucky is playing Michele father, and Diana Bukowska is playing Rose her mother. And our musicians are Barbara Gordon percussionist, and Suzanne divan Chenzo who's who's on cello and base, who have created this original scoring for the show. And we are just thrilled to work with this incredible team of artists to bring every news poetry to life on the stage. As some of you may know we're already sold out for this run, but the good news is we're going to be filming and making a film of the production and that will be available on the Yiddish Theater Ensemble website so my advice is to go on and join the YTE mailing list, the email list, so that you can receive information about the next stages of the stage production, and we'll be in touch with you. And also once again if you'd like to purchase arenas books, please go to off the common bookstore online or in person, and they will be available for you. I'd like to thank our guests for this very inspiring conversation. Naomi Newman. Irene Clefesh and Bruce Berman for a really inspiring hour. And please join us again at Mechanics Institute for our programs online and in person. I just want to say just to thank you to everybody because I know this is a group effort and I know I know I can imagine the process and the problems and the pain and the joy. So I just want to thank everyone for this I'm really looking forward to seeing it I wish everybody the best break both legs or whatever it is that you could have success. And I'm really looking forward to seeing it and thank you so so much it's really an honor. It's been our pleasure and thank you audience for joining us once again.