The product of many years of delightful research, my book on “Here Lie: Poets and Their Graves” is coming out in Hebrew in the next few weeks. 

Why did I pick the subject? It started out when we found ourselves in Newark airport at 5 a.m. and didn’t dare wake up our relatives to visit.  The restaurants were closed, and we weren’t going to sit around and wait for an appropriate time to have breakfast.  So we followed the directions in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry to get to his grave.  It was an abandoned cemetery and dawn was just breaking as we walked through the gates and began to look.   And Ginsberg made it so easy to find!

I began writing an article about the complexities of the grave (there are many) and even did a youtube talk about him,  But when I tried to publish it, I ran into a few strange responses from editors who, I began to realize, were simply jerking me around.  So I published it in Doug Holder’s mag and then in Hebrew in Haaretz and then began a long series.  

At some point I sent the mss in English to Northwestern Pess which began a strange correspondence with the editor – one that made me believe my Israeli identity was making it hard for him to give me a direct response.  It was before the boycott was blatant, but it left me with the strange feeling that I was not wanted anywhere.

So I left the 10 chapter manuscript in English and Hebrew and one day ran into a publisher in the Little Prince who asked me what I was doing.  Apologetically I told him I was writing a book on Kurt Gerron, but had published a draft of it to coincide with an exhibition of a painting of his, and now had to flesh it out.  He pushed a little further and I told him about the “Here lie” project.  

That started it – he got funding, gave me an editor, and last month made us stop our blathering and get on with it because he had received prizes for the book on the condition that the book come out by the end of 2025.  

And it will be out!  A gorgeous cover – all the photographs by my trusty sidekick – Ezi.  And now maybe I’ll even try an English publisher again.