‘for isaac rosenberg’ of three biographies in 1975,^2 very little has been said or written of Rosen-
berg, and for most of the last thirty years, ‘The Forgotten Poet of Anglo-Jewry’
(as he was dubbed by Jon Silkin)^3 has spent more time out of print than in
it.^4 For the first time in twenty years, Rosenberg is back in print with Jean
Moorcroft Wilson’s Selected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg(2003), Jean Liddiard’s
Selected Poems and Letters of Isaac Rosenberg(2003), and Vivien Noakes’s Vari-
orum edition ofThe Poems and Plays of Isaac Rosenberg(2004)—three recent
publications which may signal a new trend towards the recovery of this poet.^5
For, as with any writer whose works have long been out of print, Rosenberg
has not been the focus of much literary scholarship, nor has he been allotted
considerable (if any) space in anthologies of modern poetry, or taught in many
classrooms. All the instruments agree: with Rosenberg, we still don’t know ‘where
to begin’.
Rosenberg does not fit into the well-worn, ready-made category of ‘war poet’. This
is not simply because (as Ian Parsons points out) the great majority of Rosenberg’s
poems are either not about, or were written before, the war,^6 but also because in
our attempts to define war poetry, we rely perhaps too heavily upon terminology
redolent of Owenesque pity. For Rosenberg’s poetry is not in the pity, but takes a
colder, more impersonal stance on the suffering of war.^7 Marius Bewley writes:
(^2) Joseph Cohen,Journey to the Trenches: The Life of Isaac Rosenberg, 1890–1918(New York: Basic
Books, 1975); Jean Liddiard,Isaac Rosenberg: The Half Used Life(London: Gollancz, 1975); Jean
Moorcroft Wilson, 3 Isaac Rosenberg: Poet and Painter, A Biography(London: Cecil Woolf, 1975).
4 Jon Silkin, ‘The Forgotten Poet of Anglo-Jewry’,Jewish Chronicle, 26 Aug. 1960, 17.
Since his death in 1918, Rosenberg has only rarely been in print.Poems by Isaac Rosenberg
(London: Heinemann, 1922) appeared with an introductory memoir by Laurence Binyon, but it soon
went out of print, and is today an extremely rare book. Rosenberg’sCollected Works(Chatto & Windus,
1937) also went quickly out of print. Rosenberg remained out of print until Ian Parsons brought out
an edition in 1979, now itself long out of print.
(^5) The Selected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg, ed. Jean Moorcroft Wilson (London: Cecil Woolf, 2003);
Selected Poems and Letters [of Isaac Rosenberg], ed. Jean Liddiard (London: Enitharmon Press, 2003);
The Poems and Plays of Isaac Rosenberg, ed. Vivien Noakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
In November 2005, the first fictional novel about Rosenberg was published. EntitledBeating for Light:
The Story of Isaac Rosenberg(Milverton: Amolibros/Juniper Books, 2005), Geoff Akers’s novel weaves
the facts of Rosenberg’s biography, letters, and poems, into a fictional account of Rosenberg’s life and
times from his early days at Whitechapel to his last days at the Front.
(^6) Ian Parsons, ‘Introduction’, inTheCollectedWorksofIsaacRosenberg, ed. Ian Parsons (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1979), p. xviii.
(^7) It is worth noting that Owen’s statement, ‘The Poetry is in the pity’, has been so widely used as
to be misused. Jahan Ramazani argues that Owen’s statement is itself a problematic summation of
Owen’s own poetry, and has misled critics to overlook the integral complexities of Owen’s poetry:
‘Owen states only half of his paradoxical aesthetic when he writes: ‘‘My subject is War and the pity of
War. The Poetry is in the pity’’. ‘‘Pity’’ is Owen’s term for emotional identification with the victims
of war. But Owen’s poetry suggests that ‘‘pity’’ cannot erase the boundary that separates victim from
onlooker...His subject is also the incomprehensibility of war; the poetry is also in the alienation.
Having roused pity, Owen often forces the reader back, warning that pity cannot bridge the chasm
separating spectator and victim’ (Ramazani,Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to
Heaney(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 4).