SOURCE: "The Self in the Modern World: Karl Shapiro's Jewish Poems," in Contemporary American-Jewish Literature: Critical Essays, edited by Irving Malin, Indiana University Press, 1973, pp. 213-28.

In the following essay, Malkoff places Poems of a Jew within the context of Shapiro's other poetic works.

"These poems are not for poets," Karl Shapiro begins his Introduction to Poems of a Jew.¹ But perhaps they are. Certainly, Jewishness for Shapiro is less a matter of cultural, religious, or historical tradition than a mode of ap prehending reality. Shapiro's Jew, obviously a symbol of the human condition in general, may be specifically the archetypal poet. "Poetry is everywhere at its goal, a wise critic once said. And one might add in paraphrase: the Jew is everywhere at his goal."

Later in the brief essay, Jewishness is defined as "a certain state of consciousness which is inescapable…. Being a Jew is the...