Judith Baumel

Judith Baumel Poems

Judith Baumel Biography

She grew up in New York City, attending the Bronx High School of Science. She graduated from Radcliffe College, magna cum laude, studying with Robert Lowell, Robert Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Shaw, James Richardson, and Jane Shore. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with Richard Howard, Cynthia Macdonald and David St. John. She taught at Boston University, and Harvard University. In 1985, she married the poet and journalist David Ghitelman an early editor AGNI (magazine). They divorced in 1999. Her current partner is Philip Alcabes, professor of Public Health at Hunter College, City University of New York, and author of Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from The Black Death to Avian Flue (Public Affairs 2009) https://www.philipalcabes.com She was director of the Poetry Society of America from 1985 to 1988. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Yale Review, AGNI Review, The New York Times,[4] and The New Yorker. She lives in New York City and teaches at Adelphi University, and City College of New York. Her blog is at https://www.judithbaumel.com)

The Best Poem Of Judith Baumel

The Block

What we could hear through the walls:
What couldn’t we hear through the walls?

What we could hear in the streets:
What couldn’t we hear in the streets?

What we heard in the house,
Friday nights candles low, end stumps of challah
the first to go, the sugar cube between the teeth
accepting and changing its glessele te, forefinger on bottom
thumb on rim, spoon stuck in to relieve and draw the heat.

That one kept gasoline and fireworks in the garage.
That one parked in front of the hydrant and never
got a ticket, and when they rebuilt the street
the hydrant was moved to The Stutterer’s house—
it was una cosa vostra.
That one bought his taxi medallion with his father-in-law’s money.
Those are the refugees whose
son went flying through the windshield, the one born
in America died, the one born in Palestine was driving.
Those were in DP camps and that one gets reparations for her broken back.
That one’s butcher scales are fixed.
The pharmacist’s wife should have told us about the monthlies,
That one was going through her changes and she hit her child.
That one’s insides dropped after her last child and she won’t
Let her husband touch her.

A piece of fruit after dinner, she called the youngest one melon-head because she had one.
Many called her katchkie-duck because once a neighbor saw her
Diaper-bound waddle
But the oldest one, k’aine h’ora, could not be seen
As an infant and wouldn’t be named in the open air.
The evil eye was too subtle.

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