Hayim Nahman Bialik’s ‘On the Slaughter’

"It's here, Peter Cole’s translation of Hayim Nahman Bialik’s famous and infamous poetry about the April 1903 Kishinev pogrom along with a compact selection of the poet's other visionary, strange, passionate, and mournful works, which are just as striking and durable in altogether different ways. These translations bring us a living voice, nuanced, melodic, orchestrated with touches of rhyme that seem inevitable, less the product of a translator’s will than of the desire of language itself.” —Forrest Gander ON THE SLAUGHTER Hayim Nahman Bialik Selected and translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole Few poets in the history of Hebrew have possessed the power and prescience of Hayim Nahman Bialik. His body of work opened a path from the traditional Jewish world of Eastern Europe into a more expansive Jewish humanism. In a line that stretches back to the Bible and the Hebrew poetry of Muslim and Christian Spain, he stands out—in the words of Maxim Gorky—as “a modern Isaiah.” He remains to this day an iconic and shockingly relevant poet, essayist, and tutelary spirit. Translated and introduced by MacArthur-winning poet Peter Cole, On the Slaughter presents Bialik for the first time in English as a masterful artist, someone far more politically and psychologically unsettling than his reputation as the national poet of the Jewish people might suggest. This compact collection offers readers a panoramic view of Bialik’s inner and outer landscapes—from his visionary “poems of wrath” that respond in startling fashion to the devastations of pogroms and revolutionary unrest to quietly sublime lyrics of longing and withering self-assessment. The volume also includes a sampling of slyly sophisticated verse for children, and a moving introduction that bridges Bialik’s moment and our own. “Peter Cole—a major poet himself—has mastered the consummate master of contemporary Hebrew letters, rendering him into English, after so many others have tried, with unrivaled clarity, erudition, and multilingual precision. Here is Bialik taking his rightful place in the larger poetic world.” —Steven J. Zipperstein For three days only, On the Slaughter is available at 25% off. BUY THE BOOK   Events for On the Slaughter with Peter Cole Alan Cheuse Writing Center’s Let’s Talk: International Writers Festival 2025 Monday, September 29th, 6pm Busboys and Poets 14th & V 2021 14th Street NW, Washington, DC RSVP here Tuesday, September 30th, 12pm–7pm George Mason University Gillespie Gallery, Art and Design Building 1st Floor 4515 Patriot Circle, Fairfax, VA Peter Cole will speak at 4:30pm RSVP here Other events Wednesday, October 22nd, 5pm Yale University Bingham Hall Library, 8th Floor 300 College Street, New Haven, CT with Robyn Creswell and Eliyahu Stern Learn more here Monday, November 10th, 7pm YIVO Institute for Jewish Research 15 West 16th Street, New York City with Philip Roth biographer Steven J. Zipperstein Register here   Read a poem from On the Slaughter Over Your Heart The threshold edicts of your hearts are broken and sullied, and so the demons prance— and a chorus of clowns, disciples of folly, within great storm clouds rave. Can you see who’s waiting there by the door with a broom? The keeper of the ravaged shrines. Despair—is coming, and the jubilant pack will be expelled, swept out: “Move on.” The last glimmer of your fires will sputter, your shrines go quiet, the crowds forgotten. And over your hearts’ barren altar, desolation’s cat will howl and yawn. You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from NYRB. You can choose the types of mailings you wish to receive: Update preferences   New York Review Books 207 East 32nd Street New York, NY 10016-6305 Not a subscriber? Sign up for our newsletter here. Unsubscribe