Joe Dolce: Can you write left-handed poetry?
Can you write left-handed poetry?
The clerk at the Schreibstube produced
samples on a paper pad:
gutter rhymes, obscenities, filthy limericks.
Eighteen year old Abraham Cykiert
had written verse since fourteen,
but, in Auschwitz, a good poem earned
extra soup, bread. Even shoes.
Cykiert wrote the doggerel well,
becoming a member of a group,
that amused capos and SS at camp functions.
The Nazis loved his filth, and laughed.
At the end of the night, the entertainers
were rewarded with party leftovers,
but after the war, Abraham Cykiert
was so ashamed of the left-handed poetry
he had written to survive,
it took him twenty years
before he could write
anything
else.
Joe Dolce
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins