ROZA GUTMAN-YASNI

ROZA GUTMAN-YASNI (b. July 16, 1903)

            She was born in Kovno, Lithuania.  She studied in public school, secular high school, and university in Kovno.  She first published poetry in Kovno in the anthology Vispe (Islet) in 1920.  Over the years 1921-1939, she lived in Berlin, Paris, Spain, and London.  In 1939 she arrived in the United States.  She studied in a university in New York.  She published poems and/or songs in Vispe, Ringen (Links) in Kovno, Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw, Inzikh (Introspection) and Tsukunft (Future) in New York, Di goldene keyt (The golden chain) in Tel Aviv, and in other venues.  She published several volumes of poems: Far gor noentste (For those closest) (Berlin, 1925), 12 pp.; Lider (Poems) (New York, 1947), 31 pp.; Lider (New York, 1947), 45 pp.; Shirim (Poems), translated into Hebrew by Ḥayyim Rabinzon (Tel Aviv: Am hasefer, 1972), 71 pp.  Her poems have also been translated into English, Russian, and Hebrew.  She contributed a series of poems to Ezra Korman’s Yidishe dikhterins (Yiddish women poets).  “Her first tender poems bore witness to a refined poetess,” noted B. Minkov in an unpublished work.  “Her verses are short, full of expression and images.  She is a vigorous, distinctive, poetic figure.”  She was living in New York.

Sources: Ezra Korman, Yidishe dikhterins, antologye (Yiddish women poets, an anthology) (Chicago, 1928), pp. 242, 246, 340; Sh. Slutski, Avrom reyzen biblyografye (Avrom Reyzen’s bibliography) (New York, 1956), no. 5338.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 151.]