The Ohio Valley Regional Arts Council is sponsoring a poetry reading/discussion of East Liverpool poet, painter and translator Ruth Feldman beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Fusion & Tea downtown.Ruth Wasby Feldman (1911-2003) was born and raised in East Liverpool in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in the city’s West End. Her parents, immigrants from Lithuania, owned a small department store in town.
At 17, she enrolled at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, but the death of her parents prompted Ruth to move to Cambridge, Mass. to be with her brother, who was attending Harvard Law School. Ruth finished her degree at Wellesley College, married an attorney, and enjoyed a privileged life in Boston’s upper-middle class society.
After her husband died suddenly in his fifties, she began writing poetry and pursuing her talent as a translator of Italian poetry and prose. Feldman spent the remainder of her long life traveling in Europe and maintaining residences in both Cambridge and Rome. There is evidence in her writings that she returned to East Liverpool on occasion to visit friends.
Feldman’s poetry appeared in magazines and journals prior to the publication of three books. Saturday’s readings are drawn from two of those collections: “The Ambitions of Ghosts” and “To Whom it May Concern.” Many of her English translations of Italian writers—including Lucio Piccolo, Andrea Zanzotto, and Primo Levi—remain in print.
Feldman’s East Liverpool home, built in 1880, still stands at the corner of W. Fourth and Monroe streets and is undergoing restoration by its current owners, KSU-EL English Prof. Matt Stewart and JoAnne Frye. Stewart and Dr. Patti Swartz will lead the discussion of the poet’s work at Coffee Fusion.
