Remembering Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger with Edward Hirsch, Carlie Hoffman, and Yerra Sugarman
In-Person | Thursday | March 26 | 7-9pm
Edward Hirsch, Carlie Hoffman, and Yerra Sugarman will present a lecture on Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (1924–1942), a poet, translator, and librettist from Czernowitz (present-day Chernivtsi, Ukraine). Poems by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger from Song of the Yellow Asters (World Poetry Books, 2026), translated by Carlie Hoffman, will be read, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.
The younger cousin of Paul Celan, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger began writing as a teenager, composing original poems as well as translations from French, Yiddish, and Romanian into German. Despite her family’s modest means and the early loss of her father, she grew up amid Czernowitz’s vibrant polyglot culture, where poetry and language flourished. Between the ages of 15 and 17, she assembled her handwritten, handbound album Blütenlese, which includes 57 poems dedicated to her beloved Leiser Fichman. During World War II, the Meerbaum-Eisinger family was deported to the Michailowka forced-labor camp in Transnistria (now Transdniestria, a disputed enclave of Moldova). Selma died of typhus there on December 16, 1942, at the age of 18. Through the persistence of her friends and loved ones, her manuscript survived the war and remains a testament to her devotion to beauty, tenderness, and the lyric tradition.