Penn, Aleksandr

Born Feb. 14, 1906, in Nizhnekolymsk, now in the Yakut ASSR; died April 1972, in Tel-Aviv. Israeli poet.

Penn wrote in modern Hebrew. Until he was 14 he lived in Moscow; his first poems were written in Russian. In 1927 he emigrated to Palestine. He introduced satirical and political poetry in Israel and translated poems of V. V. Mayakovsky into modern Hebrew. In 1948 he became the literary editor of the newspaper Kol Ha’am. He joined A. Shlenskii’s group, Ketuvim.

Penn’s poems “Nights Without Roofs” (1931) and “Opposed” (1935) are well known. He combined the lyrical traditions of C. N. Bialik with Mayakovsky’s poetic perception of the revolution. He dedicated sensitive poems to the sufferings of the ghetto’s prisoners (”Memorial Candle”).