Joseph Rolnick (1879–1955)

Joseph Rolnick was born to a Jewish family near Mir, Byelorussia (present-day Belarus). In 1899, at age 20, he immigrated to the USA, settling in New York City. He worked in garment factories by day and wrote poetry at night. He made his debut as a poet in the Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts) in 1900. He went back to Europe in 1901, and re-immigrated to New York in 1907. Rolnick became a member of the avant-garde Yiddish literary group Di Yunge, which hailed him as a precursor of its ideals and poetic theory. His first volume of collected poems, Oyf'n zamdigen ṿeg, was published in 1911. As a creator of tranquil lyrics whose symbols emerge from village landscape and life, he has been compared to Robert Frost. In 1954, Rolnick published an evocative memoir, Zikhroynes (Remembrances), which was translated years later into English as With Rake in Hand: Memoirs of a Yiddish Poet (2016). His wife Feyge Rolnick edited the bibliography Yoysef Rolnik: Der Dikhter un Zayn Lid (Joseph Rolnick: The Poet and His Song), published in 1961.