M. AFRANEL

M. AFRANEL (b. 1890)

The literary name of Moyshe Froymson, he was born in Libave (Liepāja), Latvia.  He studied until age thirteen, first in religious elementary school, later in a secular school.  In 1906 he emigrated to the United States.  For a short time, he lived in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, and for a stretch he wandered about.  He was a coalminer, a farmhand, a fuel man on a locomotive, and a sailor.  In 1916 he settled in New York.  He published his first poems the following year in the weekly Di naye velt (The new world) in New York.  He later published poems in Di feder (The pen), in the anthology Inzikh (Introspection), and in Antologye (Anthology) edited by Zishe Landoy.  He also translated Heinrich Heine’s poem “Witzli Putzli.”  “He brought to modern Yiddish poetry, in the United States, an original poetic idiom and image,” wrote N. B. Minkov.  His poetry was deep and original, just as his image was original.”  He was living for a period of time in a sanatorium.

Sources: M. Olgin, in Di naye velt (New York) (July 6, 1917); N. B. Minkov, in Undzer tsayt (New York) (March-April 1955); Nachman Mayzel, Amerike in yidishn vort, antologye (America in the Yiddish word, anthology) (New York, 1955); A. Leyeles, in Inzikh 54 (New York) (April 1940).