Book
Description
This
collection showcases a generous selection of Fligelman’s “passionate,
witty, and often heartbreaking” poems. Notes
for a Novel also includes three essays on Fligelman’s
exceptional life and work.
Press Release
Drumlummon
Institute Publishes Poems of Montana Writer Frieda Fligelman
With
the publication of Notes for a Novel: The Selected
Poems of Frieda Fligelman, Drumlummon Institute of
Helena, Montana, brings into print the poetic works of,
in co-editor Rick Newby’s words, “one
of the most remarkable unknown poets of the early modern
West,” Montana writer and thinker Frieda Fligelman.
Edited
by Alexandra Swaney and Newby, the collection showcases
a generous selection of Fligelman’s “passionate,
witty, and often heartbreaking” poems. Notes
for a Novel also includes three essays on Fligelman’s
exceptional life and work. It is the second volume in the
Drumlummon Montana Literary Masters Series; the first volume
was Food of Gods and Starvelings: The Selected Poems
of Grace Stone Coates (2007).
Scholar
Harriet Rochlin, author of the forthcoming study, A
Mixed Chorus: Jewish Women in the American West, 1849–1924, writes
in her foreword:“Notes for a Novel bears
witness to a western Jewish woman who thought deeply and
felt passionately; to the strands of cultural and intellectual
electricity in small towns throughout the American West;
and to world travelers who find in their natal nests the
happiness they’d failed to find elsewhere.”
Born
and raised in Helena, Montana, Frieda Fligelman published
only a handful of poems during her lifetime, but at her
death she left behind a manuscript of 1,200 exceptional
poems. Educated at Columbia and in Paris during the 1920s,
Frieda Fligelman was a suffragist, translator, world
traveler, advocate for human rights, and founder of the
discipline of sociolinguistics.
In
his essay on Fligelman, Arnie Malina, founder of Helena’s
Myrna Loy Center for the Performing and Media Arts, writes,
Frieda’s “greatest strength as a poet is her
ability to project a witty and resilient personality, a
strong, singular voice that responds anew to adversity
and joy. Her poems exhibit the Fligelman persona in many
forms: the critic of civilization, the woman, the isolated
individual alone in a room. She sought immortality; in
her poetry, she is alive.”
Co-editor
Alexandra Swaney, musician, writer, and anthropologist,
is recently retired as folklife director for the Montana
Arts Council. Rick Newby has edited many books, including The
New Montana Story: An Anthology (2003) and The
Rocky Mountain Region, Greenwood Encyclopedia of American
Regional Cultures (2004).
Notes
for a Novel: The Selected Poems of Frieda Fligelman is
available at bookstores or by calling Riverbend Publishing,
1-866-787-2363. The 232-page softcover book is available
for $15.95.
Reviews
Sometimes self-consciousness is so strong that some of the best work never makes it to print. "Notes for a Novel: The Selected Poems of Frieda Fligelman" tells the story of widely unpublished poet Frieda Fligelman and her legacy of over one thousand poems she deemed unfit to publish. But the work speaks for itself, as Fligelman's modesty is the only thing that kept these things from print, not their quality. The mind and soul of a progressive woman in the 1920s, "Notes for a Novel" is enthusiastically recommended. "Ghetto Dweller": I have said many things of you/But I am not bitter at you.//My bitterness is for the traditions and customs/That pour their blind habits into you/As into a helpless woman.
— Midwest Book Review
Notes
for a Novel: The Selected Poems of Frieda Fligelman
Born
and raised in Helena, Montana, Frieda Fligelman may well
be one of the most remarkable unknown poets of the early
modern West. Fligelman published only a handful
of poems during her lifetime, but at her death she left
behind a manuscript of 1,200 exceptional poems. Notes
for a Novel offers a rich selection of those passionate,
witty, and often heartbreaking poems. Educated at Columbia
and in the Paris of the 1920s, Frieda Fligelman was a
suffragist, translator, advocate for human rights, and
founder of the discipline of sociolinguistics.
Notes
for a Novel bears
witness to a western Jewish woman who thought deeply
and felt passionately; to the strands of cultural and
intellectual electricity in small towns throughout the
American West; and to world travelers who find in their
natal nests the happiness they’d failed to find
elsewhere.
—Harriet
Rochlin, author
of A
Mixed Chorus:
Jewish
Women in the American West,
1849–1924
Frieda
Fligelman’sgreatest
strength as a poet is her ability to project a witty
and resilient personality, a strong, singular voice
that responds anew to adversity and joy. Her poems
exhibit the Fligelman persona in many forms: the critic
of civilization, the woman, the isolated individual
alone in a room. She sought immortality: in her poetry,
she is alive.
—Arnie
Malina, recipient,
Montana
Governor’s Award for the Arts
Helena Independent Record: Frieda Fligelman groundbreaking
scholar, feminist, poet
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