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Naomi Replansky
Naomi Replansky
Naomi Replansky
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Naomi Replansky (May 23, 1918 – January 7, 2023) was an American poet and translator. The New York Times described her poetry as investigating "social history through individual lives".[1] While her writing initially received little critical attention, she gradually developed a following which grew throughout her life. Collections of her work include Ring Song (1952), The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems, 1934-1994 (1994), and Collected Poems (2012). Replansky also translated German and Yiddish works into English.

Key Information

Background

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Replansky was born to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, the daughter of Fannie (Ginsberg) and Sol Replansky, and graduated from James Monroe High School.[1][2] She enrolled at Hunter College but did not graduate, instead dropping out to look for work. In the 1950s, she attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned a bachelor's degree in geography.[1] Replansky lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco for much of her adult life. Attempts to move to Paris in the 1950s were unsuccessful, as her passport was revoked during that time, apparently in reaction to her left-wing political beliefs.[1]

Work

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Replansky spent many years earning a living outside of poetry, working a number of service and technical jobs throughout her life.[1] However, she later became an instructor of poetry at Pitzer College, and also taught the subject at the Henry Street Settlement.[1] Her Collected Poems won the Poetry Society of America's 2013 William Carlos Williams Award and was a finalist for the 2014 Poets' Prize. Replansky's poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, such as No More Masks!, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies, and Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era. Her four books of poetry are:

  • Ring Song (Scribners 1952)
  • Twenty-One Poems, Old and New (Gingko Press 1988)
  • The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems, 1934-1994 (Another Chicago Press 1994)
  • Collected Poems (Black Sparrow Press/Godine 2012)

"My chief poetic influences," Replansky stated, "have been William Blake, folk songs, Shakespeare, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson and Japanese poetry."[3]

Ring Song, containing poems written from 1936 to 1952, was a finalist for the 1953 National Book Award.[4] Of the following hiatus in publication, she says, "I write slowly."[5] The chapbook Twenty-One Poems contains versions of work contained in the other two collections. The Dangerous World contains forty-two new poems as well as twenty-five revised poems from Ring Song. The meticulousness of her work indicates a painstaking mind and an unusual degree of perfectionism in the craftsmanship of her poems. Though often small in scale, they are giant in meaning. Her Collected Poems include many unpublished works.

Reception

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Margalit Fox of The New York Times described Replansky's poetry as "keenly celebrated yet curiously unheralded" for decades, suggesting that her spare style and reliance on rhyme was unfashionable to many poets and critics during the mid-20th century.[1] However, as the years progressed, her writing was praised by David Ignatow, Marie Ponsot, Grace Paley, and Ursula K. Le Guin. George Oppen wrote of her in 1981: "Naomi Replansky must be counted among the most brilliant American poets. That she has not received adequate praise is one of the major mysteries of the world of poetry."[6] Booklist said of The Dangerous World, "with timeless grace, she sets each poem simmering with powerful phrasing and universal experience.... Replansky brings us ageless work in a collection that should not be missed."[7]

Replansky's work was the subject of a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which cites United States Poet Laureate Philip Levine, "who once characterized Replansky as 'an intensely political poet, appalled by the cruelty, greed, and corruption of the masters of nations and corporations, appalled and enraged.' Nevertheless, she mostly eschews the role of protest poet, opting instead to dramatize the intense vulnerability of individual human subjects in a verse style that is both delicate and tough-minded.... One lives with Replansky's poems instead of simply reading or hearing them, because they speak, with intensity and concision, to essential human concerns: the longing to belong and the concomitant ache of exclusion; rage against injustice; awareness of one's own vulnerabilities, particularly those that come with aging; and the profound joy at experiencing true fellowship with others or communion with oneself." "[8]

She was also known for her translations from Yiddish and from the German of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Bertolt Brecht; Brecht's "Der Sumpf," set by composer Hanns Eisler as one of five "Hollywood Elegies," was long known only in her version ("The Swamp") until the original resurfaced among Peter Lorre's papers and was published in the 1997 Frankfurt edition. Her translation of Brecht's play, "St. Joan of the Stockyards" was performed off-Broadway by the Encounter Theater Company.

A documentary film Naomi Replansky at 100 by Megan Rossman, won several honors.[9] An oil on linen portrait of Replansky by the artist Joseph Solman is in the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Personal life

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Replansky turned 100 in May 2018 and lived another four years, giving her last public reading on December 10, 2022, less than a month before her death.[10] In her later years, she lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her Vienna-born wife, Eva Kollisch, an author and professor of comparative literature and women's studies at Sarah Lawrence College. Kollisch was rescued from the Nazis on a 1939 Kindertransport to the United Kingdom, eventually arriving in the United States in 1940.[2][11][1]

Together since the 1980s, Replansky and Kollisch married in 2009. Replansky died at home on January 7, 2023, at the age of 104.[1] Kollisch died in October of that year.[12]

References

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Further reading

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Naomi Replansky

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''Naomi Replansky'' was an American poet known for her socially conscious verse that portrayed the lives of working-class people, the realities of labor, political oppression, Jewish history, and persistent hope amid struggle. Her plain-spoken yet lyrical style, often employing rhyme and songlike cadences influenced by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and folk traditions, earned admiration from contemporaries such as George Oppen and Philip Levine, though she remained relatively unheralded for much of her long career. Born on May 23, 1918, in the Bronx, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents who faced persistent financial hardship, Replansky grew up in a working-class family and began writing poetry at a young age, with her first published works appearing in her teens. Largely self-taught, she studied history at Hunter College without completing a degree and later earned a bachelor’s in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1950s; to support herself, she held diverse jobs including factory worker, lathe operator, ocean-liner stewardess, medical editor, and computer programmer. In the 1930s and 1940s she was active in the Communist Party, and her political commitments informed her writing, which frequently addressed disenfranchisement, racism, exile, and the Holocaust while maintaining a note of resilience. Her debut collection, Ring Song (1952), which included poems written in her youth, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She published sparingly thereafter, with later volumes including Twenty-one Poems, Old and New (1988), The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems 1934–1994 (1994), and Collected Poems (2012), the latter receiving the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Replansky also translated works by Bertolt Brecht, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Itzik Manger, and she taught poetry at institutions such as Pitzer College and the Henry Street Settlement. In her later years, Replansky lived in Manhattan with her longtime companion and eventual spouse, the writer Eva Kollisch, whom she married in 2009; she continued writing into advanced age and died on January 7, 2023, at her home in Manhattan at the age of 104. Her poetry, which she described as “a way of mastering the world,” has been celebrated for its fusion of political vision and lyricism, offering enduring reflections on human endurance and social justice.

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Naomi Replansky was born on May 23, 1918, in the Bronx, New York City, to Russian-Jewish immigrants Fannie (Ginsberg) and Sol Replansky. She was raised in a working-class family in the Bronx, where her father was often unemployed and her mother supported the household through secretarial work and private English lessons for new immigrants. This environment of economic hardship shaped her early years, as reflected in her later poem "An Inheritance," which describes the unspoken family worries about money that drifted down to the children like soot or snow in the Bronx. Replansky began writing poems at a young age, composing capable verse by her mid-teens and even publishing some in literary journals and anthologies during that period. Her immigrant family and Bronx community provided early exposure to oral and folk traditions that influenced her developing voice.

Education and Early Development

Naomi Replansky graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx. She attended Hunter College in Manhattan, where she studied history, but left before completing her degree to seek employment. In the 1950s, she earned a bachelor's degree in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles. Replansky was a self-taught poet with no formal literary training. Her acknowledged influences included William Blake, Emily Dickinson, children's street chants, and English and Scottish folk ballads. She had begun writing poems at a young age, showing early aptitude for verse. From young adulthood onward, Replansky supported herself through diverse jobs, including work as a lathe operator, factory worker in New York City, ocean-liner stewardess, medical editor, and computer programmer in the punch-card era.

Political Involvement

Communist Party Membership and Leftist Beliefs

Naomi Replansky was a member of the Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s, a period when she also worked in factories. She identified with the communist movement in her youth and maintained lifelong left-wing beliefs centered on social justice, opposition to oppression, and concern for the struggles of ordinary people. These convictions focused on issues of labor, poverty, racism, injustice, and the broader portrayal of social history through individual experiences, reflecting her outrage at cruelty, greed, and corruption among those in power. Her poetry often reflected these leftist concerns, dramatized personally rather than as overt protest, as she explored the realities of working-class life and systemic inequities through intimate, human-centered narratives. As a lifelong leftist, she demonstrated against racial violence and anti-Semitism while writing passionately in support of the disenfranchised.

Political Challenges and Consequences

In the 1950s, during the height of McCarthy-era anti-communist fervor, Naomi Replansky experienced significant restrictions on her freedom of movement and personal autonomy as a direct consequence of her leftist ideology. The U.S. State Department revoked her passport throughout the decade, evidently due to her political beliefs, which prevented her from leaving the United States and thwarted her longstanding desire to relocate to Paris, a city she had expressed a deep wish to live in. Her work as a translator of Bertolt Brecht's writings in the same period, including the play St. Joan of the Stockyards, further exposed her to government scrutiny; Replansky herself believed that her friendship with Brecht and these translations alerted the FBI to her political beliefs. She reported personal encounters with surveillance, stating that she knew she was followed by FBI agents and that they interviewed her neighbors as part of their monitoring. As a committed leftist writer and intellectual, Replansky lived with the ongoing consequences of this era's political repression, which limited her opportunities and subjected her to invasive oversight well beyond formal blacklisting or hearings.

Poetry Career

Early Poetry and Ring Song

Naomi Replansky began publishing her poetry in literary journals during her teenage years, with her first appearances in print occurring in the 1930s. In July 1934, Poetry magazine featured three of her early poems: "This Ae Nighte," "The Piteous Lady," and "Amulet." These publications marked the start of her presence in the literary world while she was still in her mid-teens. Her first full collection, Ring Song, appeared in 1952 from Charles Scribner's Sons. The book was selected as a finalist for the 1953 National Book Award for Poetry. Ring Song received critical attention and established Replansky's reputation among contemporaries, earning admirers including the poet George Oppen. Replansky was known for her deliberate writing process, which contributed to extended periods between publications after her debut collection. Many of the poems in Ring Song had been composed over the preceding years and decades, reflecting her careful and unhurried approach to craft.

Later Collections and Recognition

In her later years, Naomi Replansky returned to publishing after a long interval following her debut collection. She issued the chapbook Twenty-One Poems, Old and New through Gingko Press in 1988, marking her first new publication in decades. This was followed by The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems, 1934-1994, released by Another Chicago Press in 1994, which combined selections from her earlier poetry with new and revised pieces. Her culminating volume, Collected Poems, appeared in 2012 under Black Sparrow Press, an imprint of David R. Godine, Publisher. The book gathered work from her prior collections alongside new and previously uncollected poems, incorporating many unpublished works. Replansky continued to give public readings into December 2022, when she was 104 years old.

Poetic Style and Themes

Naomi Replansky's poetry is characterized by spare, plain-spoken language combined with meticulous rhyme and meter, producing song-like cadences that draw on oral traditions and folk forms. She frequently employs traditional structures such as ballad stanzas, alternating four- and three-beat lines, and A-B-C-B rhyme schemes, using these familiar rhythms in service of radical content in a way that has been described as subversive. Her style is at once delicate and tough-minded, often blending incantatory or archaic undertones with urgent, syntax-driven rhythms when the subject demands it. Her acknowledged influences include William Blake, folk songs, black spirituals, Mother Goose rhymes, Emily Dickinson, and other sources that shaped her commitment to rhythmic, song-like forms. B. H. Fairchild has characterized her work as a "Blakean music" radically unfashionable in its devotion to song-like meters and the reality and politics of working-class experience. Critics have noted her ironic juxtaposition of innocent, nursery-rhyme-inspired rhythms—drawn from Isaac Watts or Mother Goose—with harsh depictions of a world made dangerous by rapacity, indifference, and conflict. Replansky's recurring themes center on labor and alienated work, often drawn from her own experiences as a factory worker and lathe operator, as well as broader social injustices including cruelty, greed, poverty, racism, exile, and oppression. Her poems dramatize the intense vulnerability of individual human subjects—the ache of exclusion, invisibility, and personal endurance in hostile environments—rather than relying on direct protest. These concerns frequently intersect with Jewish history and the legacies of political violence, rendered through personal lenses that highlight resilience amid struggle.

Translations

Work as a Translator

Naomi Replansky made significant contributions as a translator of works from German and Yiddish into English, particularly noted for her renderings of Bertolt Brecht, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Itzik Manger. Her translations from German included poetry and drama by Brecht, whom she befriended in Los Angeles during the mid-20th century. In the 1950s, Replansky translated Brecht's poem "Der Sumpf" ("The Swamp"), which Hanns Eisler set to music as part of his Hollywood Elegies; her English version remained the primary known text for many years until the original German resurfaced among Peter Lorre's papers and appeared in the 1997 Frankfurt edition. She also translated Brecht's play St. Joan of the Stockyards, which was performed off-Broadway by the Encounter Theater Company. These Brecht translations occurred amid political scrutiny, as her friendship with the playwright reportedly alerted the FBI to her leftist beliefs. Replansky additionally translated poetry by the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal from German. From Yiddish, she translated works by the poet and playwright Itzik Manger.

Film and Television Work

Documentary Production Credits

Naomi Replansky contributed to television documentary production in the late 20th century, serving as producer on projects that explored aspects of Jewish history and diaspora, credited under the variant name Naomi Kaplansky. She produced the 1976 TV movie Of Jerusalem Stone. In 1992 she was producer for two episodes of the TV mini-series Out of Spain - Jerusalem Which Was in Sepharad, which examined the legacy of Sephardic Jewish communities. Her final production credit came in 1997, when she served as producer for three episodes of the TV mini-series Kingdom of the Khazars, a historical exploration of the medieval Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. These works align with her longstanding interest in Jewish themes evident across her broader creative life.

Research and Appearances

Naomi Replansky served as a researcher on the 1981 television mini-series Pillar of Fire, credited under the name Naomi Kaplansky. The production, which consists of 19 episodes, draws on historical research related to Jewish and Middle Eastern history. In her later years, Replansky appeared as herself in documentary films. She is featured in Café Nagler (2016), where she appears (credited as Naomi Kaplansky) in the context of family and historical connections explored in the film. She also appears as herself in the short documentary Naomi Replansky at 100 (2020), directed by Megan Rossman, which captures her reflections on her life and poetic career during her centennial year. Replansky received thanks credits in certain productions acknowledging her contributions to historical and cultural projects.

Personal Life

Partnership with Eva Kollisch

Naomi Replansky began a long-term partnership with Eva Kollisch in the 1980s. Kollisch, a Vienna-born writer, professor, and Kindertransport survivor who taught literature at Sarah Lawrence College for three decades and authored memoirs including Girl in Movement (2000) and The Ground Under My Feet (2007), became Replansky's companion. The couple married in 2009. They lived together on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, sharing a home where they supported each other's creative and personal lives. Their partnership continued until Replansky's death in January 2023. Kollisch died on October 10, 2023, at her Manhattan home from a chest infection.

Residences and Working Life

Naomi Replansky spent extended periods of her adult life in California, residing in both Los Angeles and San Francisco before returning to New York City. She supported herself for many years through a range of service and technical jobs, including office work and editing roles, which provided financial stability while she pursued poetry. In her later years, she lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where she shared a residence with Eva Kollisch. This arrangement marked her final long-term home after decades of movement between coasts.

Awards and Recognition

Literary Honors

Naomi Replansky's poetry received significant recognition through major literary awards and nominations. Her debut collection Ring Song was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 1953. Later in her career, her Collected Poems won the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award in 2013. The award citation highlighted her mastery of song-like meters and commitment to the politics of working-class experience, describing the honor as an expression of "deep gratitude and woefully belated recognition." Collected Poems was also a finalist for the Poets' Prize in 2014.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Naomi Replansky's poetry received praise from several distinguished contemporaries and later poets, though her work remained underrecognized for much of her career. George Oppen described her as one of the most brilliant American poets and called the lack of adequate praise for her "one of the major mysteries of the world of poetry." Philip Levine lauded her incorporation of Latin American surrealism into work of "startling authority" and characterized her as "an intensely political poet, appalled by the cruelty, greed, and corruption of the masters of nations and corporations." B.H. Fairchild hailed her as "the master of a Blakean music radically unfashionable in its devotion to song-like meters and the reality and politics of working-class experience." Grace Paley described her poems as "a music for which readers of poetry have been lonesome for years." Her writing was also praised by David Ignatow, Marie Ponsot, and Ursula K. Le Guin. For decades, Replansky was keenly celebrated yet curiously unheralded, far less known than peers such as Grace Paley and Philip Levine despite admiration from major figures. Critics attributed this to her perfectionism and sparse publication record, as well as her commitment to rhyme and meter, which fell out of favor in mid-20th-century poetry circles that privileged free verse. Her subject matter—encompassing manual labor, oppression, exile, and resilience—further distanced her from mainstream trends. Her poems have appeared in anthologies addressing themes such as the Los Angeles McCarthy era. An oil-on-linen portrait of Replansky by Joseph Solman (1954) is held in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Despite the unfashionable aspects of her formal style during much of the 20th century, Replansky remained an important figure for later poets, including Philip Levine and B.H. Fairchild, who drew inspiration from her fusion of traditional metrics with politically engaged content. Her reputation grew significantly in her later years as renewed publications and recognition introduced her work to new generations.

Death

Final Years and Passing

Naomi Replansky reached the age of 100 in May 2018. She continued to reside in Manhattan during her final years, remaining active in literary circles despite the rigors of advanced age. She gave her last public reading on December 10, 2022. Replansky died at her home in Manhattan, New York City, on January 7, 2023, aged 104. Her stepson, Uri Berliner, confirmed the death. The cause was not disclosed.

References

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/books/naomi-replansky-dead.html
  2. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-replansky
  3. https://poets.org/poet/naomi-replansky
  4. https://www.kveller.com/jewish-couple-naomi-replansky-101-and-eva-kollisch-95-share-their-inspiring-stories-of-resilience/
  5. https://yetzirahpoets.org/bios/naomi-replansky/
  6. https://godine.com/products/collected-poems
  7. https://lambdaliteraryreview.org/2023/12/in-remembrance-those-we-lost-in-2023/
  8. https://on.nypl.org/3Hax03c
  9. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-728104
  10. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/naomi-replansky-poet_b_1956026
  11. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/issue/70579/july-1934
  12. https://jacket2.org/commentary/naomi-replansky-b-1918
  13. https://www.nationalbook.org/books/ring-song/
  14. https://books.google.com/books/about/Twenty_one_Poems.html?id=3bTuzgEACAAJ
  15. https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-World-Selected-Poems-1934-1994/dp/0929968344
  16. https://lambdaliterary.org/2013/02/collected-poems-by-naomi-replansky/
  17. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/auguries-of-experience-the-poetry-of-naomi-replansky
  18. https://nyplorg-data-archives.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/collection/pdf_finding_aid/REPLANSKY_PAPERS_finding_aid.pdf
  19. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1097678/
  20. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5924230/fullcredits/
  21. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5143016/
  22. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22816430/
  23. https://meganrossman.com/project/naomi-replansky-at-100/
  24. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/us/eva-kollisch-dead.html
  25. https://poetrysociety.org/award-winners/2013-book-awards-for-publishers/william-carlos-williams-award
  26. https://lilith.org/2010/03/a-reading-from-naomi-replansky/
  27. https://forward.com/culture/163413/naomi-replansky-s-career-began-in-a-factory/
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