Title: The terror of our days
Description: "The Holocaust remains incomprehensible to the world at large and without a compelling claim on most people's lives. By contrast the term "Holocaust" occupies a central place in Jewish vocabulary, and it is kept current in American letters and film. This book reflects on and analyzes poetry by four contemporary Americans - Sylvia Plath, William Heyen, Gerald Stern, and Jerome Rothenberg - none of whom directly experienced the war of annihilation directed against European Jewry.

For these poets, who must accommodate what they cannot ignore or deny, writing becomes a moral obligation as commemoration, catharsis, atonement, history, insistence on human sensitivities, resistance to brutalization, indifference, and flight from consequences."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945, Literature and society, Jews in literature, Literature and the war, History and criticism, Criticism and interpretation, American poetry, History, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature, American poetry, history and criticism, 20th century
Places: United States
People: Gerald Stern (1925-), Jerome Rothenberg (1931-), Sylvia Plath, William Heyen (1940-)
Time periods: 20th century