Rabinowitz, Anna 1933-

PERSONAL:

Born May 28, 1933, in Brooklyn, NY; daughter of Sam and Ruth Goldban; married Martin Jay Rabinowitz, September 12, 1954; children: Steven Michael, Susan Alice, Nancy Jean. Education: Brooklyn College, B.A., 1953; Columbia University, M.F.A., 1990.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—rabanna@aol.com.

CAREER:

Writer, poet, and educator. New School for Social Research, New York, NY, instructor, 1994-98. Member of board of directors, Jewish Community Relations Council, Women for Women, New York, NY, 1993, and American Opera Projects, 2006.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa, St. Mark's Poetry Project, Poets and Writers, Poets House, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America (member of board of governors, 1990; vice president, 1993).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Black Warrior Poetry Prize, Black Warrior Poetry Review, 1993; Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts Press, 1997, for At the Site of Inside Out; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 2001; Pushcart Prize nomination, 2002, for Darkling.

WRITINGS:

At the Site of Inside Out, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1997.

Darkling, Tupelo Press (Dorset, VT), 2001.

The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders, Tupelo Press (Dorset, VT), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Sulfur, Southwest Review, LIT, VOLT, and Doubletake.

Contributor to anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 1989, edited by Donald Hall, Scribner (New York, NY), 1989; The KGB Bar Reader, Harper (New York, NY), 2000; Poetry after 9/11, Melville House Publications, 2002; The Poets' Grimm, Story Line Press, 2003; and Life on the Line: Selections on Words and Healing.

American Letters & Commentary, editor and publisher.

ADAPTATIONS:

Author's poem "Darkling" was adapted into a multimedia opera production by American Opera Projects, premiered off-Broadway, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Anna Rabinowitz is a poet and educator. In Darkling, Rabinowitz presents a book-length poem constructed in the form of an acrostic: read together, the first letter of each line of her poem spells out the complete text of "The Darkling Thrush," by Thomas Hardy. With the Holocaust as background, Rabinowitz seeks to reconstruct the half-forgotten and fragmented lives of those who did not survive to tell their tales or write their memoirs. She finds her inspiration in a shoebox of old family photographs and letters, each of which offers a fragment of history and memory for her to piece together. The fragmentary nature of Rabinowitz's source material is further stressed by the layout of the poem, "the visual progression of words across the page: indentations and more indentations, dashes, spaces all serve as visual reminders that these are not whole stories," commented Rachel Barenblat on WebdelSol.com. The critic also wondered "whether it is possible to mirror the brokenness of the contemporary world in broken contemporary language, and come out of the experience enriched rather than enfeebled. In Darkling, Rabinowitz proves that it is—and that the poetry which comes out of such a struggle can be rich, profound, and well worth repeated readings." A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented, "This dense, unsettling volume makes a unique contribution to Holocaust literature." Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, called Darkling "a long, elegantly structured, and timely poem of loss and remembrance."

The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders, is a collection of "rapt and provocative poems" that "investigates the mysteries, myths and cultural accretions" that have accumulated around the Virgin Mary and the Annunciation, noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. In this work, the poet sees Mary as a mystic in the lineage of figures as diverse as Pythagoras and Catholic saints. Again, the layout of the poems often offer as much meaning as the words themselves, as Rabinowitz experiments with form and punctuation. Reviewer Janet St. John, writing in Booklist, remarked that readers of The Wanton Sublime "will be sent on a journey into fresh poetic and philosophical territory."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Darkling, p. 699; August 1, 2006, Janet St. John, review of The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders, p. 29; September 1, 2006, review of The Wanton Sublime, p. 152.

Publishers Weekly, March 31, 1997, review of At the Site of Inside Out, p. 69; November 19, 2001, review of Darkling, p. 65; March 13, 2006, review of The Wanton Sublime, p. 43.

ONLINE

American Opera Projects Web site,http://www.operaprojects.org/ (November 12, 2006), biography of Anna Rabinowitz.

Anna Rabinowitz Home Page,http://www.annarabinowitz.com (November 12, 2006).

Bookslut,http://www.bookslut.com/ (November 22, 2006), Jessica Myers Schecter, interview with Anna Rabinowitz.

Boston Review,http://www.bostonreview.net/ (November 12, 2006), Bin Ramke, review of Darkling.

Poets & Writers,http://www.pw.org/ (November 12, 2006), directory listing for Anna Rabinowitz.

Tupelo Press Web site,http://www.tupelopress.org/ (November 12, 2006), biography of Anna Rabinowitz.

WebdelSol.com,http://www.webdelsol.com/ (November 12, 2006), Rachel Barenblat, review of Darkling.