Chana Bloch. Courtesy The Persimmon Tree.
| Chana Bloch | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 15 1940 Bronx, New York |
| Occupation | poet, translator, Professor Emerita at Mills College |
Chana Bloch (March 15, 1940 - May 19, 2017) was an American poet, translator, and academic.[1]
Life[]
Bloch was born in the Bronx, New York City. She earned a B.A. from Cornell University, M.A. degrees in Judaic Studies and English literature from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
She was a professor emerita of English at Mills College in Oakland, California.[2] She taught at Mills College for over 30 years and directed the college's Creative Writing Program.[3]
Bloch held residencies at the Bellagio Center for Scholars and Artists, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She has given lectures and poetry readings at numerous U.S. colleges and universities.[4]
Bloch published 4 collections of her poetry: The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty and Blood Honey. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation and included in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize and other anthologies. She was the poetry editor of Persimmon Tree,[5] an online journal of the arts by women over sixty.
She was co-translator, with Ariel Bloch, of The Song of Songs. She translated The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai with Stephen Mitchell, and Amichai's Open Closed Open, as well as Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch with Chana Kronfeld. Bloch was also the author of the critical study, Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible.
Chana's Story, a song cycle by David Del Tredici based on her work,[6] premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Jorge Liderman's cantata, The Song of Songs, based on her translation, was performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus at Cal Performances.
She lived in Berkeley, California, since 1967. She has 2 grown sons,[7] Benjamin and Jonathan, from her marriage to Ariel Bloch, a former professor of Semitic Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. She married Dave Sutter in 2003.
Recognition[]
Bloch won the Poetry Society of America's Di Castagnola Award for Blood Honey; the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry for Mrs. Dumpty; and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, together with Chana Kronfeld, for Open Closed Open. Her translation of the Song of Songs was named as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. Her awards include 2 fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, in poetry and in translation, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 2 Pushcart Prizes, and the Discovery Award of the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center.
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- The Secrets of the Tribe. New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 1980.
- The Past Keeps Changing. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Sheep Meadow Press, 1992.
- Mrs. Dumpty. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
- Blood Honey. Pittsburgh, PA: Autumn House Press, 2009.
Non-fiction[]
- Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.
Translated[]
- Dahlia Ravikovitch, A Dress of Fire. New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 1978.
- Yehuda Amichai, The Selected Poetry (translated with Stephen Mitchell). New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
- revised and expanded edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
- Dahlia Ravikovitch, The Window: New and selected poems (translated with Ariel Bloch). New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 1989.
- The Song of Songs: A new translation with an introduction and commentary (translated with Ariel Bloch). New York: Random House, 1995; Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.
- Yehuda Amichai, Open Closed Open (translated with Chana Kronfeld). New York: Harcourt, 2000.
- Dahlia Ravikovitch, Hovering at a Low Altitude: The collected poetry (translated with Chana Kronfeld). New York: Norton, 2009.
The Moon Is Almost Full Chana Bloch’s final poems
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[8]
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ Directory of Writers: Poets and Writers
- ↑ Mills College, Faculty Index
- ↑ Arin, Jennifer. Interview with Chana Bloch. The Writer's Chronicle (March/April 2001), 10-19.
- ↑ Merle Bachman, "Chana Bloch." In Contemporary Jewish-American Dramatists and Poets: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook," ed. Joel Shatzky and Michael Taub. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1999, pp. 220-225.
- ↑ Persimmon Tree
- ↑ Jonathan Barron. "At Home in the Margins: The Jewish American Voice Poem in the 1990s." College Literature (1997), 104-123
- ↑ Mavor, Anne. "Chana Bloch." In Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds: Twenty-two Interviews with Artists Who are Mothers. Portland, OR: Rowanberry Books, 1996, 182-192.
- ↑ Search results = au:Chana Bloch, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, May 5, 2014.
External links[]
- Poems
- Two Poems by Chana Bloch at Coal Hill Review
- Chana Bloch at the Poetry Foundation
- Twelve Poems by Chana Bloch at The Persimmon Tree
- Audio / video
- Books
- Blood Honey at Autumn House Press
- Chana Bloch at Amazon.com
- About
- Chana Bloch at The Poetry Center, Smith College
- Chana Bloch Official website.
- Questions of Faith: Chan Bloch interview at Poetry Society of America.
- An interview with author Chana Bloch at San Francisco Book Review, 2011
- "Chana Bloch: 'The poem begins to shape you', interview at Talking Writing, 2014
| This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia. (view article). (view authors). |
|