Poems & Poemas: mit einigen Gedichten et quelques Poèmes

This is a book of multicultural poetry, mostly in English and Spanish, with several important additions in German and French. Mostly, the poems are presented without translation, intended as they are for readers comfortable in more than one culture and more than one language or, at least, willing to explore them. The poems address the intrinsic rootlessness of the immigrant experience, that includes a reluctant acceptance of European origins, a sometimes bemused and sometimes bewildered contemplation of Jewish identity, and reactions to the shock of new cultures, especially cultures in transition. They also trace the maturing of the meaning of love from the limited understanding of a South American adolescent steeped in romantic ideals to a mature acceptance of the modern lexicon that, inevitably, includes divorce and renewal. Anxieties, a part of every poet's sensibility, have their own series of poems, as does that most fundamental of anxieties, growing old. A section on "Antics" records several ways in which poetry is also play, whistling in the dark to distract us from the anxiety caused by our finite existence. One or two have no meaning whatsoever, and another one or two may require the reader with a general education to ask their friendly neighborhood scientist for assistance, having been written by a scientist with an antic awareness of the ironies of reality.