FINKELSTEIN, Norman 1954-

PERSONAL: Born May 30, 1954, in New York, NY; son of Harry (a lumber yard manager) and Dora Grief (an elementary school teacher) Finkelstein ; married Kathryn Wekselman (divorced, 1995); married Alice (a librarian), May 10, 1997; children: Ann, Steven. Education: State University of New York at Binghamton, B.A. (English), 1975; Emory University, Ph.D. (English), 1980. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Office—Xavier University, 3800 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45207-4446. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER: Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH, professor of English, 1980—.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association, Association for Jewish Studies.

WRITINGS:

The Objects in Your Life (poems), House of Keys/Atlanta Poetry Collective (Atlanta, GA), 1977.

The Utopian Moment in Contemporary American Poetry (literary criticism), Bucknell University Press (Lewisburg, PA), 1988.

The Ritual of New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature (literary criticism), State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1992.

Restless Messengers (poetry), University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1992.

Track (poetry), Spuyten Duyvil (New York, NY), 1999.

Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish-American Identity (literary criticism), State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2001.

Columns: Track, Volume II (poetry), Spuyten Duyvil (New York, NY), 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Currently at work on Powers, the third and final volume of "Track," a long serial poem. Researching a book on the contemporary long poem, to include Robert Duncan, Armand Schwerner, Ronald Johnson, and Nathaniel Mackey, among others.

SIDELIGHTS: Norman Finkelstein is a poet, literary critic, and professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He published his first poetry collection, The Objects in Your Life, in 1977. Craig Hill, in Small Press Review, praised Finkelstein's imagination. "From the first line to the last this small book of poetry embodies a large poetic impact."

His next book, The Utopian Moment in Contemporary American Poetry, was of a critical nature. Writing from a Marxist perspective, Finkelstein analyzes contemporary American poetry, searching for hints of the sublime and of "some incorporeal or intangible state," while remembering his contradictory responsibility to canon formation. Finkelstein seeks a utopian ingredient beyond the ideological constraints of a particular age. David Porter wrote in American Literature, "Finkelstein usefully groups his poets along a divide between 'interiorizing and exteriorizing discourses': the 'Objectivists' Williams, Zukofsky and Oppen; the New York School of O'Hara and Ashbery, those 'poets of process, of indeterminacy and open form' with their 'lingering traces of . . . the Romantic sublime . . .'; Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Helen Adam, and Ronald Johnson of 'The New Arcady' . . . and, in the final chapter, William Bronk, a poet tracking 'the theme of the self in time,' finding utopian possibility even in 'historicism's bordello.'"

In The Ritual of New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature, Finkelstein attempts to understand the significance of Jewish culture and tradition in postmodern literature, and in an age of fading traditions. He discusses his encounters with and the work of contemporary Jewish-American thinkers Harold Bloom, Gershom Scholem, George Steiner, Walter Benjamin, poets John Hollander and Allen Mandelbaum, and the fiction of Cynthia Ozick and Philip Roth. A Choice reviewer said, "The discussion of these potent cultural figures is as rewarding as it is demanding, for the author has provided an invaluable work of intellectual synthesis worthy of its subject." According to the reviewer, Finkelstein, through these voices, traces a pattern of discourse, in which the redemptive past, Jewish heritage, becomes a literary ideal for some writers, a reference point against contemporary and future existence.

In an essay-style review of Finkelstein's book, published in Jewish Writing and Thought, Sanford Pinsker observed, "In less skillful hands, the yoking of Continental theory to what does, or does not, constitute Jewish writing might have become so precious, convoluted, and impenetrable that neither religious writing nor its secular counterpart would have been well served; but Finkelstein takes imaginative writing and intellectual construction with equal seriousness. Better yet, his own writing is equal to the demanding task he has set for himself."

Finkelstein's collection of poetry, Restless Messengers, recalls certain themes discussed in The Ritual of New Creation: Symbols of Jewish heritage are used to construct Finkelstein's own postmodern poetry. Joseph Donahue, writing in Multicultural Review, described the first poem as centering around a shoemaker plucked from a story by I. B. Singer, and suggested that this shoemaker is but one of several guides leading the reader into a building of living memory. In this structure, Donahue suggested, Finkelstein excavates what survives today of old European Jewish culture. Donahue wrote, "But the poetry is also aware of how readily fact dwindles into fable and how neither fact nor fable placate the desire for something like truth."

Keith Tuma, reviewing the collection in Sulfur, bemoaned what he called the poetry's prosody but commended Finkelstein's meditative wisdom, melancholy yet engaging.

Ohio Review contributor Donald Revell compared Finkelstein's imaginative words to those of Franz Kafka, Schulz, and Isaac Babel. "A poem," Revell suggested, "is first a promise, then a desolation, and finally an uneasy covenant." Revell added, "In Restless Messengers . . . Norman Finkelstein endures and understands vision as a continuous diaspora, as a moment of immanence whose force shatters the moment and sends its disparate elements into futurity."

In Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish-American Identity, Finkelstein attempts to understand the connection between the modernist aesthetic of the twentieth century and the aesthetic of twentieth-century Jewish-American poets whose ideas were shaped more significantly by English literature than Hebrew thought. Finkelstein discusses the work of poets Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky, Allen Grossman, Jerome Rothenberg, Armand Schwerner, Harvey Shapiro, Michael Heller, and Hugh Seidman. He also describes the poets' critical reception at the hands of Harold Bloom and Robert Alter. A Choice reviewer said, "Readers will have to determine for themselves whether the American and Jewish literary traditions can be reconciled, but Finkelstein's . . . presentation will greatly enhance the endeavor."

Finkelstein told CA: "My poetry has always been something of a scholar's art. Another way to put this is that although much of my poetry, like most lyric poetry, is about the self, what I am moved to declare about that self is mediated by the strong and frequently explicit presence of other texts within the zone of poetic utterance. In short, my poetry is always already a commentary, as much as my criticism is. Regardless of genre, my vehicle of written expression is charged through its contact with other writing; and it is through such contact that I gain access to what I have to say about myself and the world."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Literature, March, 1989, David Porter, review of The Utopian Moment in Contemporary American Poetry, pp. 146-148.

Choice, September, 1978, review of The Objects in Your Life, p. 866; March, 1993, M. Butovsky, review of The Ritual of New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature, p. 1145; December, 2001, M. Butovsky, review of Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish-American Identity, p. 683.

Multicultural Review, April, 1992, Joseph Donahue, review of Restless Messengers, p. 74.

Ohio Review, winter, 1992, Donald Revell, review of Restless Messengers, pp. 101-118.

Publishers Weekly, December 13, 1991, review of Restless Messengers, p. 51.

Salmagundi, summer, 1994, Sanford Pinsker, review of The Ritual of New Creation, pp. 225-233.

Small Press Review, January, 1980, Craig Hills, review of The Objects in Your Life, p. 13.

Sulfur, spring, 1993, Keith Tuma, "Briefly Tooted," pp. 342-343.