Excerpts are provided here from a forthcoming book to mark the centenary of the poet Isaac Rosenberg, who died in France on the Western Front in 1918. The author, who was able to interview Rosenberg’s contemporary Joseph Leftwich, explains Rosenberg’s experiences of anti-Semitism, including in the army, and his roots in London’s working-class, Jewish East End.
BottomleyG.HardingD. W. eds., The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg (London: Chatto and Windus, 1949), p. 179.
2.
Siegfried Sassoon, Foreword to Isaac Rosenberg, Collected Poems, 1937, p. vii. Also available as ‘Siegfried Sassoon on Rosenberg’s Experimentation with language’, in Critical Views on ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’, BloomHarold ed., Poets of World War 1 Wilfred Owen & Isaac Rosenberg (Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002).
3.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 159.
4.
ParsonsIan ed., Isaac Rosenberg: Collected Works: poetry, prose, letters, paintings and drawings (London: Chatto and Windus, 1979), p. 248.
5.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 221.
6.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 222.
7.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 226.
8.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 230.
9.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 205.
10.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 230.
11.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 180.
12.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 155.
13.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 201.
14.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 299.
15.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 228.
16.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 70.
17.
See Bernard Gainer, The Alien Invasion (London: Heineman, 1972), p. 36.
18.
Gainer, The Alien Invasion, p. 57.
19.
Leftwich interviewed in Chris Searle, ‘Spanning two languages: the legacy of Isaac and Joseph’, Race & Class28, no. 1 (1986), p. 34.
20.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 71.
21.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 224.
22.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 219.
23.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 231.
24.
Searle, ‘Spanning two languages’, p. 36.
25.
Searle, ‘Spanning two languages’, p. 32.
26.
Phil Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978).
27.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 190.
28.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 141.
29.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 268
30.
Searle, ‘Spanning two languages’, p. 39.
31.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 44.
32.
Rosenberg, Collected Works, p. 190.
33.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 203.
34.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 177.
35.
Rosenberg, Collected Poems, p. 179.
36.
KeynesGeoffrey ed., Blake Complete Writings (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).
