SOMMER, Jason

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Brandeis University, B.A.; Stanford University, M.A.; St. Louis University, Ph.D. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—8349 Big Bend Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63119-3136.

CAREER: Professor and poet. Fontbonne College, St. Louis, MO, professor of English and poet-in-residence, 1985—. Also taught at St. Louis University, Webster University, and University College, Dublin.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Gabriel Rosenstock, Portrait of the Artist as an Abominable Snowman: Selected Poems, Forest Books (Boston, MA), 1989.

Lifting the Stone (poems), Forest Books (Boston, MA), 1991.

Other People's Troubles (poems), University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1997.

SIDELIGHTS: Jason Sommer's first collection of poems, Lifting the Stone, is an exploration of myth and legend, especially those based on Judaic and Biblical sources. Writing in the first person and drawing on the tradition of the Midrash, Sommer expands and explores ancient Jewish tales with a personal, modern diction. Typical first lines, such as "With me out cold on the kitchen floor" and "I have something to say that I will say here" open into what M. Butovsky, writing for Choice, described as "fresh and compelling readings of human experience" and "richly satisfying patterns of thought and feeling." Helpful notes provide the reader with the cultural and historical context of the tales and poems.

Sommer is the son of a Holocaust survivor, and in his second book, Other People's Troubles, he writes about the Holocaust, about how history marks people's lives, and about how we can live with the horrors of history. His characters are Holocaust survivors who "speak through" him or to him; he records their stories in poems that are both troubling and telling.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, January, 1992, p. 748.

New Republic, May 31, 1980, p. 26; July 19, 1980, p. 34.

Ploughshares, winter, 1997, H. L. Hix, review of Other People's Troubles, p. 217.

Prairie Schooner, fall, 2000, Marcus Cafagna, review of Other People's Troubles, p. 177.*