Rick Black ’75

Poetica Publishing Company

2013

 
First-place winner of the 2012 Poetica Magazine chapbook contest, Star of David is a collection of poems by Rick Black that emerged out of a visit to the I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection at the Gelman Library of George Washington University. Black, a contemporary American Jewish poet and bookmaker, had gone there to research a limited edition that he is making of Yehuda Amichai poems. After studying items such as a 15th-century woodcut, an ancient map of Palestine, and some anti-Semitic materials, he examined a yellow Star of David that had made its way to the archive. The star inspired him to jot down a few lines that eventually became the title poem of this collection.