Eva Kollisch & Naomi Replansky

Eva Kollisch; (born August 17, 1925 in Vienna) is an American writer, literary scholar and a German pacifist and feminist.

Eva Kollisch was the daughter of writer Margaret Kollisch (1893-1979), born Moller, and the architect Otto Kollisch (1881-1952). She spent her school years in Baden. In July 1939, she fled on a Kindertransport to the UK and in 1940 and she emigrated with her two brothers Peter and Stephen in the U.S., where her parents had found refuge in November 1939.

In New York, from 1941 to 1946 she was a member of the Trotskyist Workers Party and married the nephew of Max Shachtman, party activists and author Stanley Plastrik, one of the editors of the magazine Dissent. In 1950, she married her second husband, the painter Gert Berliner (* 1924) who, with others such as the painter David Gross, collectively run the cafe Rienzi, 107 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. The cafe was a kind of Mecca of the New York bohemians and there were guests such as James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan and other beatniks. The science fiction author Chester Anderson appeared as a musician.

Eva Kollisch studied German literature and science at Brooklyn College and later at Columbia University. Then she led, together with Gerda Lerner and Joan Kelly, a course for women's studies at Sarah Lawrence College. At this college, she eventually became a professor and taught English, German, comparative women literature.

From her marriage to Berliner, she had a son, the journalist Uri Berliner.


©Sheila Lamb. Eva Kollisch & Naomi Replansky (©15)
Naomi Replansky is an American poet who was born in the Bronx; she currently resides in Manhattan. SInce 1986, she's shared her life with the prose writer Eva Kollisch, who escaped from Hitler's Europe in the famous Kindertransport. As a young woman, Replansky met Brecht through a friend in New York. While in LA, she translated a Brecht poem called "The Swamp," which she says probably described the morphine addiction of the actor Peter Lorre, a close friend of Brecht in Europe and California.

( Read more... )

Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Kollisch (in German)

Naomi Replansky (born May 23, 1918) is an American poet who was born in the Bronx; she currently resides in Manhattan. SInce 1986, she's shared her life with the prose writer Eva Kollisch (born August 17, 1925 in Wien), who escaped from Hitler's Europe in the famous Kindertransport. As a young woman, Replansky met Brecht through a friend in New York, and their association continued. While in LA, she translated a Brecht poem called "The Swamp," which she says probably described the morphine addiction of the actor Peter Lorre, a close friend of Brecht in Europe and California.

Her 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. Four collections of her work have appeared: 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, forthcoming 2011).

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

Ring Song, containing poems written from 1936 to 1952, was nominated for the National Book Award. Of the following hiatus in publication, she says, “I write slowly.” 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.

( Read more... )

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Replansky

( Read more... )

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
Amazon: Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher