Border to Border, Door to Door: Selected Homeward Poems of Rokhl Korn

Abstract

"Rokhl Korn was a Polish-Canadian Yiddish writer whose legacy spans decades and continents—from the feminist modernist Yiddish literature of interwar Poland to her wartime years of wandering in the Soviet Union to her immigration and warm welcome in postwar Montreal. This thesis presents translations of selected poems from all eight of her published books of poetry, ranging from 1928 to 1977. Through it all, her themes of diaspora and finding a home in poetry will be emphasized, making a case for Korn to be read by general non-Yiddish-speaking audiences as a canonical poet of exile and wandering. Through the culturally specific lens of a Yiddish poet in exile from her native Galicia region, Korn’s work can be read universally as poems of placelessness and longing, of lamentation while still being in love with the world and its sensory delights. This thesis will trace Rokhl Korn’s journey through all the various homes she had as well as the borders she crossed and obliterated in her poems."