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    The Ghetto, and Other Poems
    The Ghetto, and Other Poems
    The Ghetto, and Other Poems
    Ebook99 pages46 minutes

    The Ghetto, and Other Poems

    By Lola Ridge

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 2006
    The Ghetto, and Other Poems
    Author

    Lola Ridge

    Lola Ridge (1873, Dublin–1941, Brooklyn) was a poet and editor active in many radical causes and in avant-garde literary circles in New York in the decades before the world wars. She published five volumes of poetry between 1918 and 1935 and served as an editor at two leading modernist journals, The Broom and Others. Two (unannotated) collections of her early poetry have been published in recent years, edited by Daniel Tobin.

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    Reviews for The Ghetto, and Other Poems

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    • 4/5
      This collection of early poems by Lola Ridge is not up to the quality of Sun-Up, but the title poem and several others hows the promise of Ridge's later work. I am not sure why she gets such little recognition, except that her revolutionary leftism is objectionable to many.
    • 4/5
      At first, I wasn't incredibly impressed by Ridge, but the farther I got into this collection, the more I was drawn in. Her heavy reliance on unique images and attention to detail, combined with her straight-forward language, make these poems surprisingly engaging and hard-hitting, particularly when describing the poverty she saw around her in the early twentieth century. These poems are accessable and graceful--I think that anyone who reads slowly enough to give them a chance to sink in will end up appreciating them both for their messages and their beauty, as well as their careful language. Highly recommended; this is a collection I'll come back to repeatedly, and one of the more inspiring poetry collections I've read from the time period.

    Book preview

    The Ghetto, and Other Poems - Lola Ridge

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: The Ghetto and Other Poems

    Author: Lola Ridge

    Posting Date: August 17, 2012 [EBook #4332] Release Date: August, 2003 First Posted: January 8, 2002

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHETTO AND OTHER POEMS ***

    Produced by Catherine Daly

      The Ghetto

      Lola Ridge

    TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

      Will you feast with me, American People?

      But what have I that shall seem good to you!

      On my board are bitter apples

      And honey served on thorns,

      And in my flagons fluid iron,

      Hot from the crucibles.

    How should such fare entice you!

    CONTENTS

      The Ghetto

      Manhattan

      Broadway

      Flotsam

      Spring

      Bowery Afternoon

      Promenade

      The Fog

      Faces

      Debris

      Dedication

      The Song of Iron

      Frank Little at Calvary

      Spires

      The Legion of Iron

      Fuel

      A Toast

      The Everlasting Return,

      Palestine

      The Song

      To the Others

      Babel

      The Fiddler

      Dawn Wind

      North Wind

      The Destroyer

      Lullaby

      The Foundling

      The Woman with Jewels

      Submerged

      Art and Life

      Brooklyn Bridge

      Dreams

      The Fire

      A Memory

      The Edge

      The Garden

      Under-Song

      A Worn Rose

      Iron Wine

      Dispossessed

      The Star

      The Tidings

    The larger part of the poem entitled The Ghetto appeared originally in

    THE NEW REPUBLIC and some of poems were printed in THE INTERNATIONAL,

    OTHERS, POETRY, etc. To the editors who first published the poems the

    author makes due acknowledgment.

    THE GHETTO

    I

      Cool, inaccessible air

      Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights,

      But no breath stirs the heat

      Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto

      And most on Hester street…

      The heat…

      Nosing in the body's overflow,

      Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close,

      Covering all avenues of air…

      The heat in Hester street,

      Heaped like a dray

      With the garbage of the world.

      Bodies dangle from the fire escapes

      Or sprawl over the stoops…

      Upturned faces glimmer pallidly—

      Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold,

      And moist faces of girls

      Like dank white lilies,

      And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air

           as at empty teats.

      Young women pass in groups,

      Converging to the forums and meeting halls,

      Surging indomitable, slow

      Through the gross underbrush of heat.

      Their heads are uncovered to the stars,

      And they call to the young men and to one another

      With a free camaraderie.

      Only their eyes are ancient and alone…

      The street crawls undulant,

      Like a river addled

      With its hot tide of flesh

      That ever thickens.

      Heavy surges of flesh

      Break over the pavements,

      Clavering like a surf—

      Flesh of this abiding

      Brood of those ancient mothers who saw the dawn break over Egypt…

      And turned their cakes upon the dry hot stones

      And went on

      Till the gold of the Egyptians fell down off their arms…

      Fasting and athirst…

      And yet on…

      Did they vision—with those eyes darkly clear,

      That looked the sun in the face and were not blinded—

      Across the centuries

      The march of their enduring flesh?

      Did they hear—

      Under the molten silence

      Of the desert like a stopped wheel—

      (And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand…)

      The infinite procession of those feet?

    II

      I room at Sodos'—in the little green room that was Bennie's—

      With Sadie

      And her old father and her mother,

      Who is not so old and wears her own hair.

      Old Sodos no longer makes saddles.

      He has forgotten how.

      He has forgotten most things—even Bennie who stays away

           and sends wine on holidays—

      And he does not like Sadie's mother

      Who hides God's candles,

      Nor Sadie

      Whose young pagan breath puts out the light—

      That should burn always,

      Like Aaron's before the

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