Aaron Kramer
Encyclopedia
Aaron Kramer was an American poet, essayist, college professor and a translator
best known for his volume of poems titled Seven Poets in Search of an Answer (1940).
Kramer was a professor emeritus at Dowling College
in Oakdale
, L.I. He had a wife, Katherine; two daughters, Carol Kramer of Tucson, Arizona
, and Laura Kramer of Montclair, New Jersey
, a sister, Regina Rothman of Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.
and Ronald Reagan
's 1985 visits to Nazi graves in Bitburg
. . Kramer wrote poems about the Holocaust for four decades. In the 1930s, He started writing poems about the Spanish American War and it continued through most of his life. He also had an interest on writing in and commitment to testify about African American history
. . His first poems about exploited labor appeared in 1934 and his last were published in 1995. Kramer’s 1937 poem “The Shoe-Shine Boy” published when he was only fifteen years old. He adopted traditional meters—favoring iambic trimeters, tetrameters, and pentameter—in part to install a radical politics within inherited rhythms. His earliest poems about the suppression of freedoms in the United States date from 1938 and continued writing them through the 1980s. Kramer wrote his first pamphlet
in 1938 titled The Alarm Clock, it was funded by a local Communist Party chapter. . Kramer also produced translations
of “Rilke: Visions of Christ” and “Der Kaiser von Atlantis”, the opera
composed by Viktor Ullmann
in the Theresienstadt concentration camp
in 1943. Kramer was one of the few American writers to produce one a series of poems about McCarthyism
, from satiric "The Soul of Martin Dies" (1944) to "Called In" (1980), his poem of outrage against those compelled to testify before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee. Aaron Kramer first gained national
prominence with Seven Poets in Search of An Answer (1944) and The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine (1948). His master piece is his 26 poems compromising the 1952 sequence “Denmark Vesey", which is about plans for aborted 1822 slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina
. In addition to his poetry, Kramer published a number of collections of translations, which includes several of his works form volumes of Heine, Rilke, Yiddish Poetry, and his poems about the Holocaust. His critical books include The Prophetic Tradition in American Poetry which was published in 1968 and Melville’s Poetry which was published in 1972. Kramer collaborated with a group of artists on “The Tune of the Calliope: Poems and Drawings of New York” and was editor of the 1972 anthology “On Freedom’s Side: American Poems of Protest”. He wanted to radicalize root and branch of our literally tradition, not to abandon it for alternative forms. He translated and edited the work 135 Yiddish poets were published as part of “A Century of Yiddish Poetry”. Kramer had a variety of different jobs until obtaining a position teaching English that would later become Downing College.
College, 1951. Special Collections PS2234 .K7
• Melville's Poetry: Toward the Enlarged Heart; A
• Thematic Study of Three Ignored Major Poems.
Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1972. Special Collections PS2382 .K7
• Neglected Aspects of American Poetry: The Greek
• Independence War and Other Studies. Oakdale, NY:
Dowling College Press, 1997.
Main Stacks PS3521.R29 N44 1997
Special Collections PS3521.R29 N44 1997
• On Freedom's Side: An Anthology of American Poems
of Protest. Macmillan, 1972.
Special Collections PS593.P77 K7
• The Prophetic Tradition in American Poetry, 1835-1900.
Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1968. Special Collections PS201 .K7olarly Works
Original
• The Burning Bush: Poems and Other Writings (1940-
1980). Ed. Thomas Yoseloff. New York: Cornwall
Books, 1983.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 A6 1983
• Carousel Parkway and Other Poems. San Diego: A.S.
Barnes, 1980.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 A17 1980
• Long Night's Journey Back to Light. Oakdale, NY:
Dowling College, 1973.
Special Collections PS615 .L6 1973
• Long Night's Journey Back to Light II. Ed. Alex
Kramer. Oakdale, NY: Dowling College, 1977.
Special Collections PS615 .L6 1977
• The Golden Trumpet. New York: International Publishers,
1949. Special Collections PS3521.R29 G6
• Henry at the Grating: Poems of Nausea. New York:
Folklore Center, 1968.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 H4
• In the Suburbs. Winterville, GA: Ali Baba Press, 1986.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 I49 1986
• In Wicked Times. Illus. Barbara Allen. Arlington, VA:
Black Buzzard Press, 1983.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 I5 1983
• Indigo and Other Poems. New York: Cornwall Books,
1991. Special Collections PS3521.R29 I54 1991
• Golden Land! A Travelog in Verse. Oakdale, NY:
Dowling College Press, 1976.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 O18
Translations
• A Century of Yiddish Poetry. Ed. and trans. Aaron
Kramer. New York: Cornwall Books, 1989.
Special Collections PJ5191.E3 C46 1988
• Kramer, Aaron. Moses: Poems and Translations. New
York: O'Hare Books, 1962.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 M6
• The Last Lullaby: Poetry from the Holocaust. Ed. and
trans. Aaron Kramer. Illus. Saul Lishinsky. Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 1998.
Special Collections PJ5191.E3 L37 1998
• Reisen, Abraham. Poems. Trans. Aaron Kramer. Privately
printed, 1971. Special Collections PJ5126 .R4
• Rilke, Rainer Maria. Visions of Christ: A Posthumous
• Cycle of Poems. Ed. Siegfried Mandel. Trans. Aaron
Kramer. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press,
1967. Special Collections PT2635.I65 A6 1967
• Songs and Ballads: Goethe, Schiller, Heine. Trans. Aaron
Kramer. New York: O'Hare Books, 1963.
Special Collections PT1172 .K72 1963
• Teitelboim, Dora. All My Yesterdays Were Steps: The
Selected Poems of Dora Teitelboim. Ed. and trans.
Aaron Kramer. Illus. Stan Kaplan. Hoboken, NJ: Dora
Teitelboim Foundation, 1995.
Special Collections PJ5129.T38 A24 1995
• Zychlinsky, R. God Hid His Face. Trans. Barnett Zumoff,
Aaron Kramer, Marek Kanter, et al. Santa Rosa, CA:
Word & Quill Press, 1997.
Special Collections PJ5129.Z96 G63132 1997
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
best known for his volume of poems titled Seven Poets in Search of an Answer (1940).
Kramer was a professor emeritus at Dowling College
Dowling College
Dowling College is a private co-educational liberal arts college with three campuses spread across Long Island, New York. The college's main campus in Oakdale, NY sits on the site of William K. Vanderbilt's former Idle Hour estate, which is now known as Fortunoff Hall. The Brookhaven Campus in...
in Oakdale
Oakdale
-United Kingdom:*Oakdale, Caerphilly*Oakdale, Dorset*Oakdale, North Yorkshire*Oakdale, Surrey-United States:* Oakdale, California* Oakdale, Connecticut* Oakdale, Illinois* Oakdale, Iowa* Oakdale, Louisiana...
, L.I. He had a wife, Katherine; two daughters, Carol Kramer of Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
, and Laura Kramer of Montclair, New Jersey
Montclair, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 38,977 people, 15,020 households, and 9,687 families residing in the township. The population density was 6,183.6 people per square mile . There were 15,531 housing units at an average density of 2,464.0 per square mile...
, a sister, Regina Rothman of Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.
About Kramer
Kramer wrote his first protest poems in the mid-1930s when he was barely a teenager, through his pointed critiques of the 1983 war in GrenadaGrenada
Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...
and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's 1985 visits to Nazi graves in Bitburg
Bitburg
Bitburg It is situated approx. 25 km north-west of Trier, and 50 km north-east of Luxembourg . One American airbase, Spangdahlem Air Base, is located nearby.-History:...
. . Kramer wrote poems about the Holocaust for four decades. In the 1930s, He started writing poems about the Spanish American War and it continued through most of his life. He also had an interest on writing in and commitment to testify about African American history
African American history
African-American history is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans held in the United States from 1619 to 1865...
. . His first poems about exploited labor appeared in 1934 and his last were published in 1995. Kramer’s 1937 poem “The Shoe-Shine Boy” published when he was only fifteen years old. He adopted traditional meters—favoring iambic trimeters, tetrameters, and pentameter—in part to install a radical politics within inherited rhythms. His earliest poems about the suppression of freedoms in the United States date from 1938 and continued writing them through the 1980s. Kramer wrote his first pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
in 1938 titled The Alarm Clock, it was funded by a local Communist Party chapter. . Kramer also produced translations
Translations
Translations is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel written in 1980. It is set in Baile Beag , a small village at the heart of 19th century agricultural Ireland...
of “Rilke: Visions of Christ” and “Der Kaiser von Atlantis”, the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
composed by Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann was a Silesia-born Austrian, later Czech composer, conductor and pianist of Jewish origin.- Biography :...
in the Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi German ghetto during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín , located in what is now the Czech Republic.-History:The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders...
in 1943. Kramer was one of the few American writers to produce one a series of poems about McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, from satiric "The Soul of Martin Dies" (1944) to "Called In" (1980), his poem of outrage against those compelled to testify before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee. Aaron Kramer first gained national
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
prominence with Seven Poets in Search of An Answer (1944) and The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine (1948). His master piece is his 26 poems compromising the 1952 sequence “Denmark Vesey", which is about plans for aborted 1822 slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
. In addition to his poetry, Kramer published a number of collections of translations, which includes several of his works form volumes of Heine, Rilke, Yiddish Poetry, and his poems about the Holocaust. His critical books include The Prophetic Tradition in American Poetry which was published in 1968 and Melville’s Poetry which was published in 1972. Kramer collaborated with a group of artists on “The Tune of the Calliope: Poems and Drawings of New York” and was editor of the 1972 anthology “On Freedom’s Side: American Poems of Protest”. He wanted to radicalize root and branch of our literally tradition, not to abandon it for alternative forms. He translated and edited the work 135 Yiddish poets were published as part of “A Century of Yiddish Poetry”. Kramer had a variety of different jobs until obtaining a position teaching English that would later become Downing College.
His Works, Translations, Original Poems, Anthologies, Scholarly Works
• SchEmma Lazarus: Her Life and Work. Thesis, BrooklynCollege, 1951. Special Collections PS2234 .K7
• Melville's Poetry: Toward the Enlarged Heart; A
• Thematic Study of Three Ignored Major Poems.
Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1972. Special Collections PS2382 .K7
• Neglected Aspects of American Poetry: The Greek
• Independence War and Other Studies. Oakdale, NY:
Dowling College Press, 1997.
Main Stacks PS3521.R29 N44 1997
Special Collections PS3521.R29 N44 1997
• On Freedom's Side: An Anthology of American Poems
of Protest. Macmillan, 1972.
Special Collections PS593.P77 K7
• The Prophetic Tradition in American Poetry, 1835-1900.
Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1968. Special Collections PS201 .K7olarly Works
Original
• The Burning Bush: Poems and Other Writings (1940-
1980). Ed. Thomas Yoseloff. New York: Cornwall
Books, 1983.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 A6 1983
• Carousel Parkway and Other Poems. San Diego: A.S.
Barnes, 1980.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 A17 1980
• Long Night's Journey Back to Light. Oakdale, NY:
Dowling College, 1973.
Special Collections PS615 .L6 1973
• Long Night's Journey Back to Light II. Ed. Alex
Kramer. Oakdale, NY: Dowling College, 1977.
Special Collections PS615 .L6 1977
• The Golden Trumpet. New York: International Publishers,
1949. Special Collections PS3521.R29 G6
• Henry at the Grating: Poems of Nausea. New York:
Folklore Center, 1968.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 H4
• In the Suburbs. Winterville, GA: Ali Baba Press, 1986.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 I49 1986
• In Wicked Times. Illus. Barbara Allen. Arlington, VA:
Black Buzzard Press, 1983.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 I5 1983
• Indigo and Other Poems. New York: Cornwall Books,
1991. Special Collections PS3521.R29 I54 1991
• Golden Land! A Travelog in Verse. Oakdale, NY:
Dowling College Press, 1976.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 O18
Translations
• A Century of Yiddish Poetry. Ed. and trans. Aaron
Kramer. New York: Cornwall Books, 1989.
Special Collections PJ5191.E3 C46 1988
• Kramer, Aaron. Moses: Poems and Translations. New
York: O'Hare Books, 1962.
Special Collections PS3521.R29 M6
• The Last Lullaby: Poetry from the Holocaust. Ed. and
trans. Aaron Kramer. Illus. Saul Lishinsky. Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 1998.
Special Collections PJ5191.E3 L37 1998
• Reisen, Abraham. Poems. Trans. Aaron Kramer. Privately
printed, 1971. Special Collections PJ5126 .R4
• Rilke, Rainer Maria. Visions of Christ: A Posthumous
• Cycle of Poems. Ed. Siegfried Mandel. Trans. Aaron
Kramer. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press,
1967. Special Collections PT2635.I65 A6 1967
• Songs and Ballads: Goethe, Schiller, Heine. Trans. Aaron
Kramer. New York: O'Hare Books, 1963.
Special Collections PT1172 .K72 1963
• Teitelboim, Dora. All My Yesterdays Were Steps: The
Selected Poems of Dora Teitelboim. Ed. and trans.
Aaron Kramer. Illus. Stan Kaplan. Hoboken, NJ: Dora
Teitelboim Foundation, 1995.
Special Collections PJ5129.T38 A24 1995
• Zychlinsky, R. God Hid His Face. Trans. Barnett Zumoff,
Aaron Kramer, Marek Kanter, et al. Santa Rosa, CA:
Word & Quill Press, 1997.
Special Collections PJ5129.Z96 G63132 1997