WEBVTT

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There are many sections in
this book, which revolve around

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each other and
talk to each other

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though they are contained units.

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The Spring Crickets
is one of them.

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Another one of those
is a group of poems

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that meditate on all the
different meanings of the word

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ghetto throughout the ages,
starting from its first known

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appearance in a
document describing how

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the Jews in Venice
in the 16th century

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were to be placed in the get,
which was a word for slag,

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it was a word for
where they dumped

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or the residue of the
factories, the foundries.

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And so with that first pushing
off of a group of people

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onto a land or
circumscribing them,

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that's where the word began.

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I'm going to read to you
a few of those poems--

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I think three of them.

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Of course, one of the
thing that we think of--

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two things that we think of
when we think of the word ghetto

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are our own, the ones we
have so creatively created

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in this country,
but also there are

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ghettos of the spirit and
the soul and all of that.

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One of the more horrific
consequences of that,

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of course, is World War II
and the concentration camps,

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and one of the most
ingenious and therefore

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horrifying manifestations
of a concentration camp

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was the one at the
Theresienstadt or Theresien.

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This one was ingenious
because they modeled it

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as-- it was supposed to be
the model concentration camp.

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It was one that could
be flipped in an instant

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to look like everything
was going OK.

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They tended to put the
composers, the artists,

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the writers, the musicians,
all in this concentration camp.

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And whenever the Red
Cross came through,

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they would quickly give them
fresh clothes and instruments

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and have them march,
do a cheerful parade

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so that the Red Cross could
think everything is going OK.

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This poem is spoken in the voice
of a survivor of Theresienstadt

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by the name of Alice,
or Aliza, Herz-Sommer,

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and she did survive.

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She was a pianist.

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Transit.

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This is the house
that music built.

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Each note a
fingertip's purchase,

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rung upon rung laddering
across the unspeakable world.

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As for those other shrill
facades rigged-for-a-day

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porticos, composed to
soothe regiments of eyes,

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guilt-reddened, lining the
parade route, horn flash,

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woodwind wail, well,
let them cheer.

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I won't speak judgment on the
black water passing for coffee,

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white water for soup.

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We supped instead
each night on Chopin,

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hummed our grief soaked
lullabies to the rapture

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rippling through.

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Let it be said while
in the midst of horror,

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we fed on beauty, and that,
my love, is what sustained us.

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