The Jewish Poets Collective

The award winning poet Jamie Wendt’s Laughing in Yiddish (Broadstone Books, 2025) begins with the poem The Guests. It is Sukkot, and the poet’s children are holding the etrog and lulav as the poet welcomes ancestors to the Sukkah. The poet writes
“We tell the children,
Memory is inherited,
Ash is in your bones.”
The collection ends with the poem, Above the Valley, in which the poet, as granddaughter, records the stories of a dying grandparent. The poem ends beautifully,
“I will keep you. Let me tell you a story.
There was once was a wound bigger than the humid sky.
And you were there, holding back the cracking clouds.”

The poems that reside in between these two are in large part the story of the journey of Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe to the United States, specifically Chicago, where the poet resides with her family. Historically rich and full of deep love and pride for the people and their stories, these poems will speak to many readers whose families undertook the same journey from the Pale, who settled in America, and who built lives that resonate through the generations. And if the reader does not share this history, then they will learn a great deal. A personal favorite of mine is A Union for Self-Defense: A Worker’s Oath, a work that lays out in tight, succinct lines the trajectory from pogroms in Europe to a Jewish worker’s union in America.
“A union, they call it. Enlightenment becoming self defense.“

Other topics are written of in this collection. For example, Wendt also includes poems that honors the Chicago of the past, and how entire neighborhoods were destroyed by highways and the march of time. But whatever the subject of the poem, it’s clear that the poet has not just an excellent grasp of history, but a love of it, and she does a beautiful job translating history into poetry.

Jamie Wendt is an award winning poet who graduated from the University of Nebraska Omaha with an MFA in Creative Writing, and she received a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education from Drake University. She is a middle school Humanities teacher and lives in Chicago with her husband and two kids. Her book, Laughing in Yiddish can be purchased at Broadstone Books and on Amazon. You can learn more about her on her website. Jamie is also on Instagram @jamiewendtpoet.
Jamie will be reading from her book for the Jewish Poets Collective on September 11. Register here to attend.