1. Yiddish Writings (mostly in English translation)
Published:
“A. Sutzkever’s “The Woman in the Panama Hat” Critical Essay, published in the
Yiddish-language journal Yugntruf No. 97, August 2002
“Sender” Short Story; “Yugntruf” August 2004
“A Second Look Backward” Travel (A Visit to Auschwitz); “Yugntruf” August 2005
“About Der khayes-folvark [Animal Farm];” “Yugntruf” August 2005
“The New York Chronic Cougher” Poem; “Yugntruf” August 2006
“An Upheaval of Worlds” Science Fiction Story; “Yugntruf” December 2006
“The Magician” Essay; Yugntruf June 2007 (in memory of Prof. Mordkhe Schaechter.)
Unpublished:
Poems:
“In a Bad Mood” (2009)
“January in Riverside Park; End of January in Riverside Park” (2011)
“The Accountant” (2011)
“Zofi” (2014) [in memory of Zophia Shulman, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto]
“Ms. Mosquito” (2014)
“Ramshackle Porches” (2015)
“Partners” (2016)
“From Past to Future” (2016)
“My Sargasso Sea of Yidishkeyt” (2016)
“It Has Come, the Time” (2016)
“Two Lyric Poets” (2018)
“Behind the Times” (2018)
“A Lifetime” (2018)
“A Memory” (2018)
“A Harp Song” (2018)
“You Can Learn a Lot from a Cat” (2018)
“Apollinaire” (2019)
“What I know” (2019)
“Heaven or Hell” (2019)
“As I’ve fallen through a hole in myself” (2021)
“Whither the bird flies” (2021) [in memory of Mindl Rinkewitch, Yiddish poet]
“Two” (2021)
“A Lid” (2021)
“Jacob’s Ladder” (1-2022)
“He Comes Each Year” (2-2022)
“Early Morning” (2-2022)
“A Greeting” (3-2022)
“Bleary Vision” (8-2022)
“A Lied” (12-2022)
“Coffee House Pictures” (4-2023)
“Tempus Fugit” (4-2023)
“A Surprise on the Upside” (4-2023)
“On the Little Island” (4-2023)
“Life – a Book” (4-2023)
“Hunters and Gatherers” (4-2023)
“The Birds” (7-23)
“The Journey home” (7-23)
“The Orange Sky” (9-2023)
“One More Poem” (9-23)
“At the Same Table” (12-2023)
“Beethoven” (12-23)
“Brahms” (12-23)
“Gone Astray” (12-23)
“A Last Day” (2-24)
“A Cold Early Morning” (3-24)
“Old McDonald” (4-24)
“The Wheel Turns” (4-24)
“Awoke” (4-24)
“On a Balcony in Naples” (5-24)
“Nam June Paik and I” (6-24)
Prose:
“The Philosopher’s Stone” (2003) Essay – ideas that have shaped my work as a composer
“Dr. Miller” (2004) Memoir – a friend who adopted an orphan from the camps
“The Last Shtetl or Rabbi Elimelekh” (2005) Novella – Jewish life in post-1945 Poland
“The Black Lecture” (2005) Short Story – a mock-horror story in the style of H. P. Lovecraft
“An African Legend” (2005) Tale – a possible origin for the image of the mythical unicorn
“The Dress” (2006) Short Story – an uncle takes an orphaned niece on a railway journey from eastern Hungary, through Vienna, to Błonie near Warsaw, in 1905.
“A Legend for Our Times” (2006) Essay – reflections on a story from the Popol-Vuh.
“The Birds” – 1 Act Play (2006) Characters are the descendants of pigeons who had regularly been fed by Isaac Bashevis Singer in a New York City park.
“Madame Margaretha” (2007) Novella – Jews on both sides in the South African Boer War
“The Motorcycle” (2008) Short Story – part-fictional family chronicle
“A Fish Story” (2009) Short Story – an incident from the Iran-Iraq war, told by an Iranian friend
“Kukus” (2010) Short Story – an Iranian friend’s talking parrot
“A Peek in the Album” (2011) Memoir – a visit to Bohemia and Slovakia to visit the towns of my forebears
“Memories of the Falklands War” (2011) Memoir – Argentinian and British attitudes in New York in 1979
“Joli” (2012) Memoir – a relative who died in Auschwitz
“The Challenge” (2012) Essay – on the artist’s muse and C. Jung’s view
“Something in the Air” (2012) An essay on the sour mood of the U.S. electorate
“Dominikswall” (2013) A Novella – on Jewish life in Danzig post-WWI
“Talks with Malke Shepsl Shifra Reyzls” (2014) A memoir – conversations with Regina Najman, survivor of Starachowice, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen
“Beethoven and the Klezmer Band” Reflections on an incident from Peretz Markish’s “Milkhome.” (2016)
“The Hinge of Fate” (2016) Essay on the U.S. elections of 2016
“The 15th of December, 1916” Essay commemorating the centenary of the end of the siege of Verdun (2016)
“The Marriageable Girls of Isfahan” (2012-17) Short story – an Iranian wedding
“Still Lives” Essay on the psychology of art – paintings as reflections of the observer (2017)
“Memorial Day” Essay (2018)
“A Different Way of Valuing Work” (2018)
“A Pervasive Sense of Fear” Essay on the growth of narcissism in present-day culture (2018)
“H. Leivick and I” Essay – how Yiddish poetry has helped to shape my music (2019)
“Lwów and Riverdale” Essay – two Polish poets who lived in Riverdale (2019)
“A Distant Echo” – a boyhood memory (2019)
“The Generation of 1910” – poets and others who grew to adulthood in Central Europe after the First World War (2019)
“No Humans Need Apply” – a satirical look at the state of the world (2019)
“Four Cups of Tea” (2021)
“Pontypridd” – memoir of my Welsh childhood. (2021)
Other:
Short talk in Yiddish on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and its translation into Yiddish
by Charles Nydorf and Elinor Robinson, at YIVO, NY (6/22/03)
2. Translations:
Yiddish – English:
“Over the Ruins of Ploine” Michal Burshtin (Novel; 1st half – 2007; 2nd half – 2020)
“Hinde” Kadya Molodovsky (story) (2007)
Poems of Mani Leib, A. Glanz-Leyeles, Z. Segalowitsch, Aaron Zeitlin, Binem Heler,
Noftoli Gross, A. Sutzkever, Max Broderson, I. I. Segal, H. Leivick, Louis Miller, Rachel Korn (2000 – 2021)
“Bez” Peretz Markish (2018)
“The (Second) Breaking of the Vessels” H. Leivick (poem) (2019)
“Milkhome” Peretz Markish (Pt. 1 Chs. 1 – 18) (2020-2021)
“Our Nest is No More” Aaron Zeitlin (poem) (2022)
English -Yiddish:
Libretto for “The Meshugener Mashgiach” (Opera by Dov Rosenschein – Yiddish
material only – 2008)
Polish – English:
“Chopin’s Piano” Cyprian Norwid (2005)
“The Father of the Plague Stricken” (excerpt); Sonnet – Juliusz Słowacki (2008)
“Childhood in a Small Austrian Town” Ingeborg Bachmann (2017)
“The Smile from Above” Andrzej Bobkowski (2017)
“Meetings and Partings” Kornel Filipovicz (2017)
“The Poet Arnold Słucki on the Nowy Świat” Ryszard Kapuściński (2019)
“In Search of the Chanson” Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski [1926] (2020)
“The East” [memories of life on a collective farm] Andrzej Stasiuk (2020)
“The Most Famous Lemkos in the World” [Andy Warhol] Andrzej Stasiuk (2020)
“Moses und Aron” Jerzy Stempowski (2020)
“Problems of the Avant-Garde” Jerzy Stempowski (2020)
“Playing on Small Drums” (excerpt) Olga Tokarchuk (2021)
Polish – Yiddish:
“At the Round Table” and “If We Dropped Everything” Julian Tuwim (2009)
“Writings about Pinsk” Artur Zomoslawski; in “Kapuściński: Non Fiction” (2011)
French – Yiddish
“Les Bijoux” Charles Baudelaire (2009)
French – English
“White Laurels” Anne-Marie de Backer (2020)
3. Writing in English
A different way of valuing work
A few answers
Apologia
Conversations with Felix Galimir
CoPA Ceremony Address
Dean’s Reception Notes
Intervallic Inflexion
Leon Trotsky
Night Thoughts of a Composition Teacher
Notes for a Lecture on Time and Memory
Something in the Air
Sonata for Cello and Piano – Addtitional Thoughts
The Challenge
The Hinge of Fate
The Philosopher’s Stone
The Specious Present
The Third Way
Thoughts on the Teacher
Unmusical Music
Wednesdays at the Con
Reninterpreting the Past: Brahms’s Link to Bach in the Setting of ‘Mit Fried un Freud ich fahr dahin’ from the Motet Op. 74 No. 1. In “Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music: Festschrift in Honor of Carl Schachter” Ed. Poundie Burstein and David Gagne/ (Pendragon Press, NY 2006)