Bread Without Sugar (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gerald Stern
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Parents and children, Jews or Jewish life, Fathers, Death or dying, Funeral rites or ceremonies, Life and death, Poland or Polish people, Cemeteries
The Poem
“Bread Without Sugar” is a long fifteen-page poem in eight unnumbered parts that function not so much as stanzas as discrete sections (each approximately thirty to sixty lines in length). To further complicate the picture, the poem is written in memory of the poet’s father, contains an epigraph from Grace Paley (“This is what makes justice in the world—to bring these lives into the light”), and, at its conclusion, is dedicated to the writer and editor Ted Solotaroff. It is necessary to keep these three aspects in mind as the poem unfolds.
The setting...
[The entire page is 1609 words long]

