Myra Sklarew is Professor of Literature at American University and the author of many books, including Lithuania: New and Selected Poems and The Witness Trees: Lithuania. She is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry, the Di Castagnola Award, and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award.

Acknowledgments

Preface

Learning the Language

The Landscape of Dislocation
From the Backyard of the Diaspora
Learning the Language
Who Has Not Dreamed of Flying
Yiddish Poetry
Morocco: Gauze Curtains, Round Tombs, Hidden Jews
What Hasanin M'Barak Said

Like a Field Riddled by Ants

In the Afterlife Which is a Library
The Messenger
Getting There
Like a Field Riddled by Ants
My Companion the Aleph-Bet

The World Is a Parchment Scrawled with Words

Khamsin
Night Watch
A Journal for John Holmes
From Alexandria to American via Amtrak
Interview with Joseph Brodsky, February 28, 1979
The Howard Poets in Perspective
Counterpoint

Life, the Unfinished Experiment

The Selfish Gene (or, Cortazar's Watch)
The Knockout Mouse on the Doorstep of Neurobiology (or, the Mind/Body Problem Revisited)
AIDS: Latency and HIV Reservoirs: In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time
Human Gene Therapy: Harnessing the Body's Defenses Against Cancer
The Puzzle People
Genes, Blood, and Courage: A Boy Called Immortal Sword
Root Causes: Stem Cells and the Tower of Babel
The Statue Within

A Place Called Gehinom

Writing the Holocaust: auch ohne/Sprache
Holocaust
On Muranowska Street
Then
1941
The Roots of Resistance: Le Chambon

Instructions for the Messiah

Crossing Over
Instructions for the Messiah
What is a Jewish Poem?
Certainty
Crossing into the New Millennium: American University, Convocation, August 1998
Grandfather: Lost and Found
Ode to the Czar's Assassin
The Messiah Reconsidered

Notes

Index