Klein, A.M.

▪ Canadian poet

in full  Abraham Moses Klein 

born 1909, Ratno, Volhynia, Russian Empire [now Ratne, Ukraine]

died Aug. 21, 1972, Montreal, Que., Can.

      Canadian poet whose verse reflects his strong involvement with Jewish culture and history. He was a member of the Montreal group, a coterie of poets who, influenced by the poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and the novelist James Joyce, broke with the tradition of sentimental nature poetry then popular in Canada.

      Though raised in an Orthodox environment and encouraged to enter the rabbinate, Klein attended McGill University (1926–30) and then studied law at the University of Montreal (1930–33). In the ensuing years he practiced law in Montreal and at various times edited the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, lectured at McGill, and was active in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (now the New Democratic Party). Following a nervous breakdown in the mid-1950s, he retired from legal practice, ceased editing and writing, and lived in seclusion with his family until his death.

      An ardent supporter of Zionism, Klein made the Jewish experience a vehicle for his artistic expressions. Hath Not a Jew . . . (1940), Poems (1944), and The Hitleriad (1944) are volumes that deal with Jewish persecution by the Russians and Nazis. After a visit to Israel he wrote about its creation in The Second Scroll (1951), a symbolic novel that carries overtones of the techniques of James Joyce, on whom Klein was an authority. The Rocking Chair and Other Poems (1948) departs from the Jewish frame of reference in describing the change wrought by industrialization on Quebec.

Additional Reading

Usher Caplan, Like One That Dreamed: A Portrait of A.M. Klein (1982); Zailig Pollock, A.M. Klein: The Story of the Poet (1994).

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