Aaron Kramer

Aaron Kramer (13 December 1921 – 7 April 1997 ) was an American poet, translator, and social activist. A lifelong poet of political commitment, he wrote 26 volumes of poetry, three of prose, and ten of translations between 1938 and (published posthumously) 1998. Kramer taught English at Dowling College in Oakdale, Long Island, New York.

Biography

Aaron Kramer was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. (1941) and M.A. (1951) from Brooklyn College and Ph.D. (1966) from New York University. 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 Grenada and Ronald Reagan's 1985 visits to Nazi graves in Bitburg. fontsize =80%Kramer was moved by the support he received by writers around the world who rallied to support him in his stand against McCarthyism.

Private life and death

Kramer married Katherine and had two daughters, Carol and Laura. and his obituary in the New York Times,

Poetry:

"The Shoeshine Boy" (1937) "The Death of President Roosevelt" (April 13, 1945) The Golden Trumpet (New York: International Publishers, 1949) Denmark Vesey and Other Poems Including Translations from the Yiddish Poems by Morris Winchevsky, Morris Rosenfeld, David Edelshtat, Joseph Bovshover (Private printing, 1952) Roll the Forbidden Drums! (New York: Cameron & Kahn, 1954) The Tune of the Calliope: Poems and Drawings of New York. Illus. Theodore Fried, et al. (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1958) Rumshinsky's Hat and House of Buttons: Two Collections of Poetry (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1964) Henry at the Grating: Poems of Nausea (New York: Folklore Center, 1968) On the Way to Palermo and Other Poems (South Brunswick: A.S. Barnes, 1973) Long Night's Journey Back to Light (Oakdale, NY: Dowling College Press, 1973) O Golden Land! A Travelog in Verse (Oakdale, NY: Dowling College Press, 1976) Long Night's Journey Back to Light II. Ed. Alex Kramer (Oakdale, NY: Dowling College Press, 1977) Carousel Parkway (1980) In Wicked Times. Illus. Barbara Allen. (Arlington, VA: Black Buzzard Press, 1983) In the Suburbs (Winterville, GA: Ali Baba Press, 1986) Indigo and Other Poems (New York: Cornwall Books, 1991)

Collection:

The Burning Bush: Poems and Other Writings (1940–1980). Ed. Thomas Yoseloff (New York: Cornwall Books, 1983)

Essays:

Regrouping: Poems (Northport, NY: Birnham WoodGraphics, 1997)

Translations:

Moses: Poems and Translations (New York: O'Hare Books, 1962) Songs and Ballads: Goethe, Schiller, Heine. Trans. Aaron Kramer (New York: O'Hare Books, 1963) Rilke, Rainer Maria. Visions of Christ: A Posthumous Cycle of Poems. Ed. Siegfried Mandel. Trans. Aaron Kramer (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 1967) Reisen, Abraham. Poems. Trans. Aaron Kramer (Privately printed, 1971) The Last Lullaby: Poetry from the Holocaust. Ed. and trans. Aaron Kramer. Illus. Saul Lishinsky (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998) Zychlinsky, Rajzel. God Hid His Face. Trans. Barnett Zumoff, Aaron Kramer, Marek Kanter, et al. (Santa Rosa, CA: Word & Quill Press, 1997)

Edited and translated:

A Century of Yiddish Poetry. Ed. and trans. Aaron Kramer (New York: Cornwall Books, 1989) 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)

Editing:

"In later years, Kramer co-edited West Hills Review: a Whitman Journal, and edited or co-edited numerous other anthologies."