Poetry Poster #7: David Caplan

This week’s poem, “God Knows English” by David Caplan, is complemented by a photograph by Noah Rabinowitz. The poem and photo are part of a series by Caplan called “Observances,” which appeared in our Spring 2012 issue on the state of American Poetry. To download a high-resolution PDF of this image, click here.

In his introduction to the portfolio of poems by David Caplan, Stephen Burt writes:

Caplan reacts to what he saw, to what he heard, and to what he learned when he visited Tiferes Bachurim, a yeshiva in Morristown, New Jersey. Yeshivas or yeshivot (the Hebrew plural) are residential institutions devoted to Jewish learning, with the study of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud at the core of the curriculum. … It is, as a matter of course, a single-sex institution, where boys and young men observe a strict dress code.

You can find other poems in the series listed on this page, under “VQR Portfolio.”