Jerome Rothenberg’s Poland/1931, a continuing series of ancestral poems, appeared in installments over the course of five years, published in limited editions by various small presses. This volume brings together the contents of all the earlier books, integrating them with the most recent sections. The author himself describes the work as “an experimental attempt to explore, and recover, ancestral sources in the world of Jewish mystics, thieves, and madmen.” Drawing from the kabbala and Hasidic lore, folk custom and historic fact, Rothenberg constructs a free-verse collage that gives voice to the interior journey between the New World and the Old. Related to his poetry and translations are the innovative anthologies that Rothenberg has edited as part of ’’an on-going attempt to reinterpret the poetic past from the point of view of the present," including Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia & Oceana (Doubleday) and, with George Quasha, America a Prophecy: A New Reading of American Poetry from Pre-Colombian Times to the Present (Random House).