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Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern is the author of 15 books of poetry, including, most recently, Save the Last Dance (Norton, 2008), as well as This Time: New and Selected Poems (Norton), which won the 1998 National Book Award. Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992 was published by W.W. Norton in the spring of 2010. Stern has a memoir coming out from Trinity University Press called Stealing History, which will be published in early 2012, along with a new book of poems from W. W. Norton, In Beauty Bright.

Stern's Cigars With Sholem Alechim

Lunchtime they argued over the plots and sometimes
one of them read a passage with a heavy, say,
Polish accent and for a minute they were like
the men, although they never pounded the table,
and later the fumes either made their eyes water
or made them dream, though their fingers were independent
and clever; and there was a large white sink in which
they scrubbed their yellow hands nor did they have
too far to go nor did they work too long there,
and those who married, as like as not married upstairs
or in the yard, if it was warm, among the
flowers they had no names for they gathered and wore
like feathers in their curly uncut hair.

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