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    Nobody Died Laughing
    Nobody Died Laughing
    Nobody Died Laughing
    Ebook81 pages38 minutes

    Nobody Died Laughing

    By Herb Brin

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    About this ebook

    Light, joyful poetry you will not find here. These are poems infused with passion, with pain, with indignation, and especially with anger, as Herb Brin sweeps through millennia of Jewish history, directing his fury at the persecutions of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the travesties of war and especially the Holocaust. Brin also writes movingly of the California Gold Rush, of his travels through Mexico and Guatemala. He encompasses the passing of human life, conveying the innocence of childhood, the agonies of childbirth, the sorrows of aging. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel wrote: “Your poems are timeless: poignant, eloquent, thoughtful. Your voice, Herb, penetrates the Jewish soul, for it brings such ancient fears and hopes to life.”
    Herb Brin was well-known as a courageous journalist and publisher. But as an internationally known poet, he also built a world-wide following for his brash style and unflinching passion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHerb Brin
    Release dateMar 31, 2012
    ISBN9781476195070
    Nobody Died Laughing
    Author

    Herb Brin

    Herb Brin (1915 – 2003) was born and raised in Chicago. Herb was an investigative reporter for the City News Bureau and Los Angeles Times, a world-recognized poet, and pioneering Jewish journalist. He founded the Heritage, a chain of Jewish community newspapers spanning southern California, where he served as editor, publisher and columnist. His books include: Conflicts, My Spanish Years, Wild Flowers, Nobody Died Laughing, Poems from the Rubio, Ich bin Ein Jude, and Justice, Justice. He is survived by three sons, Stan, David and Dan.

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      Book preview

      Nobody Died Laughing - Herb Brin

      Nobody Died Laughing

      Poems of Witness

      To Millennia of Madness

      Against the Jews

      By Herb Brin

      Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012

      Originally published by Books of Heritage

      Copyright © 2000 by Herb Brin

      Library of Congress Catalog # 95-75701

      ***

      Dedication

      For my grandson, Terren

      And a world of grandchildren

      Who will never really understand

      The loss of children to a great nation.

      But they must forever try…

      ***

      June 14, 1999

      Dear Herb

      Though timely, your poems are timeless: poignant, eloquent, thoughtful.

      Your voice, Herb, penetrates the Jewish soul, for it brings such ancient fears and hopes (to life).

      As ever, your friend.

      Elie Wiesel

      ***

      Foreword

      As it happens, America’s foremost Jewish poet is my father – Herb Brin. His amazing passion and creativity in language are the things that make him sui generis. There is none like him.

      He is a man of special gifts of ability to turn a phrase, to create a memorable metaphor, to shove a mirror in the face of the ugly world that brutalized his people.

      These gifts bear witness to a history of covenant with the Jewish people, through his own lifetime and beyond to the past and future.

      His is a remarkable poetry of witness.

      Herb Brin was born in Chicago before America’s entry into the first World War.

      Because of community circumstances, he fought almost daily with neighboring toughs who would mock the Jewish people as Zhid – the Polish Z word. My father marched with the great Jewish labor movement and later with Martin Luther King. He collected pennies on the street cars of Chicago to buy trees for Palestine, long before the birth of Israel.

      Through his father – my grandfather – he acquired a love for rhythms in words. Herb Brin is totally unafraid of words. He’ll use these and thous and any sonuvabitch phrase that he thinks he must to get a poet’s job done.

      He has been hailed by Robert Graves, Elie Wiesel and other masters of letters of the Twentieth Century.

      Herb Brin is not just a poet of course. As publisher and columnist for Heritage Jewish newspapers in California, Herb Brin channels the same Chicago street fighter pugnacity that characterizes his poetry, always in defense of – and in celebration of – Jewish survival.

      In this, his eighth book, you will find vintage Herb Brin.

      You will be stirred, you will be inspired by his rhythms and by his imageries. And you will hear the echoing voices of a great and enduring people.

      Through Crusades, Inquisitions, and Holocausts, it is the duty of poets, especially poets like Herb Brin, to make sure that these voices will never be silenced.

      --Dan Brin

      ***

      Commentary on Nobody Died Laughing

      The title itself trumpets the poet’s defiance. And Herb Brin’s collected poems in Nobody Died Laughing express rage at the horrors perpetrated by the Christian nations of Europe against our people, led by Germans and their

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