Marrying America: a Jew in Exile

Melvin Wilk

Mey 2013 · Xlibris Corporation

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Wilk is a poet not only of the utmost competence but brilliance. Here is a poet able to give mature voice to the oldest and most enduring American theme: the immigrant as spiritual pilgrim. The clarity of the pilgrim voice is the admirable center of Wilks book--as if a straight-speaking Brooklynite has been hot-wired to the mysteries at the heart of the American experience. Its a compelling voice, rising at times out of violence yet the tone it takes is often of lyric tenderness--a tenderness so rare in modern poetry it cause you to sit up straight. --Larry Woiwode Wilk maps new territory of the heart and the Heartland. Thats why his poetry is such a marriage with America, when divorce is impossible. --Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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Born in 1939, Melvin Wilk grew up in Brooklyn, New York; attended The High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and Queen’s College; and received a BA from the University of Montana. He earned an MA in English from Boston University, an MA in Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. He taught at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa for 28 years and was awarded the prestigious Professor of the Year award the year he retired. He has published a book of poetry, In Exile (Bookmark Press, University of Missouri), and a scholarly book, The Jewish Presence in T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka (Brown University). He published many poems in several different journals, including The New Yorker and Poetry. He and his wife of 45 years raised three children. He died in 2012.