AUTHOR PROFILE
B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.
His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; HawaiiReview; LeGuepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. His latest poetry collections are "Lorca at Sevilla" and "Captive Cities". |
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Why do you write?
I write to sum up the awareness of language as a moral expression and force in my experiences.
What other creative activities are you involved in?
I was something of a child prodigy on the violin, which marked a connection to my emerging lyrical and musical voice when I became a poet, novelist and essayist.
Who is your favorite author and why?
Marcel Proust is my favorite author. I feel that he expressed what others may have partially and artificially observed in society, but which he converted into art.
Tell us about the mechanics of how you write.
I begin with paper and pen as a word or phrase has already lodged in its form or rhythm in my sensibility.
Finally, what do you think about Carp, the fish, not our website?
Carp is a fish that has a special meaning for me from my mother's Sephardic Jewish side of the family, brought to us from my grandmother Mendes' hands as a generational appetizer from her Ashkenazic grandmother for a Sabbath or Passover meal, part of the legacy and history of the Russian poor, as we see in "Fiddler on the Roof."
Carp or gefilte fish is often eaten with strong horseradish, raw beets or carrots, bringing up for me childhood memories in a Jungian sense, as my grandmother would recall her own fears of pogroms and would run down to the cellar even in America on Passover, fearful of the bullies outside her village in the pale of her neighborhood, and for the boys forced to join the Czarist Army or for the girls who might be kidnapped or raped.
Meals of carp bring up issues of assimilation and prejudice and gave me my sense of tolerance and compassion for other faiths and ethnic groups with a sense of social justice and tolerance for other people reflected in my poetry.
Carp or gefilte fish is often eaten with strong horseradish, raw beets or carrots, bringing up for me childhood memories in a Jungian sense, as my grandmother would recall her own fears of pogroms and would run down to the cellar even in America on Passover, fearful of the bullies outside her village in the pale of her neighborhood, and for the boys forced to join the Czarist Army or for the girls who might be kidnapped or raped.
Meals of carp bring up issues of assimilation and prejudice and gave me my sense of tolerance and compassion for other faiths and ethnic groups with a sense of social justice and tolerance for other people reflected in my poetry.