Few Hebrew writ­ers have pos­sessed the pow­er and pre­science of Hay­im Nah­man Bia­lik, who opened a path from the tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish world of East­ern Europe into an expan­sive Jew­ish human­ism. To this day he remains an icon­ic and shock­ing­ly rel­e­vant poet, essay­ist, and tute­lary spir­it. Trans­lat­ed and intro­duced by MacArthur-win­ning poet Peter Cole, On the Slaugh­ter presents Bia­lik for the first time in Eng­lish as a mas­ter­ful artist, some­one far more polit­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly unset­tling than his rep­u­ta­tion as the nation­al poet of the Jew­ish peo­ple might sug­gest. This com­pact col­lec­tion offers read­ers a panoram­ic view of Bialik’s inner and out­er land­scapes: his vision­ary ​“poems of wrath” respond in star­tling fash­ion to the dev­as­ta­tions of pogroms and a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in cri­sis, while his qui­et­ly sub­lime lyrics of long­ing, doubt, and with­er­ing self-assess­ment bring us into the silence at the heart of his art. The vol­ume also includes a sam­pling of sly­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed verse for chil­dren, and a mov­ing intro­duc­tion that bridges Bialik’s moment and our own.