BROKHE KUDLI (BROCHE COODLEY)

BROKHE KUDLI (BROCHE COODLEY) (July 20, 1892-February 29, 1980)

            A poetess, she was born in Yozefpol (Josypivka), Podolia.  In 1913 she emigrated to the United States.  She debuted in print in 1924 with a poem in Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor) in New York.  She went on to publish poems there and in other American Yiddish serials: Pasifik (Pacific), Di feder (The pen), Kalifornya idishe shtime (Jewish voice of California), L. Meltser’s Arbayt (Labor), Tsayt (Times), Inzikh (Introspective], Mayrev (Evening), Zunland (Sun land), Frayhayt (Freedom), Ineynem (Altogether) in Chicago, Hamer (Hammer), and Oyfsnay (Afresh), among others.  Her work also appeared in: Ezra Korman, Yidishe dikhterins, antologye (Female Yiddish poets, anthology) (Chicago: L. M. Shteyn, 1928); Nakhmen Mayzil, Amerike in yidishn vort (America in the Yiddish word) (New York, 1955); and M. Daytsh, Antologye midvest un mayrev (Anthology of the Midwest and the West) (Chicago, 1933).  Her work includes: Uzorn (Designs) (Los Angeles, 1931), 63 pp.; Midber un marantsn (Desert and oranges) (Los Angeles, 1946), 107 pp.; Nit af broyt aleyn (Not on bread alone) (Tel Aviv, 1971), 102 pp.  As Yankev Glatshteyn notes: Her “intimate tenor under the California sun has become her song….  [She] has few words, but for the quiet for which she has searched and has found, she possessed enough….  With her words [she] wishes for silence and for silence she has just enough speech….  [Her] distinctive and special contribution to Yiddish poetry is to the poem about California.”  She died in Los Angeles, California.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Yankev Glatshteyn, In tokh genumen (In essence) (New York, 1947), pp. 197-202; Malke Kheyfets-Tuzman, in Kheshn (Los Angeles) (September 1975); Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Berl Cohen