Written soon after the founding of the state of Israel, The Second Scroll is A.M. Klein’s most innovative and visionary work. The five “books” of the novel are a modern testament of Jewish experience to which are appended “glosses” or commentaries in the form of drama, epistle, poetry, and psalm. The action centres on a young writer from Montreal, whose search for his legendary Uncle Melech becomes a journey of revelation through Italy, Morocco, and the Holy Land. Dissident and exile, reformer and scholar, Melech is a messianic figure who enacts the destiny of his people and embodies the spiritual yearnings of everyman. The Second Scroll, Klein’s only novel, combines the lyric genius of his poetic works with compelling reportage to create one of the most eloquent and original works in Canadian fiction.

It is for his poetry that A.M. Klein is best known and most warmly remembered. This collection includes all Klein's poetry, both original works and translations from Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, and Latin. Many of them, coming from all periods of his careers, have never been published. The poems are arranged chronologically according to date of composition. This makes possible, for the first time, an appreciation of Klein's poetic development. The editor's introduction places this development in the perspective of Klein's life and time, and in particular explores Klein's lifelong struggle to reconcile his dual vocations as both a Jewish and a modernist writer. The textual apparatus identifies all authoritative versions for each poem and lists all emendations and all substative variants in both published and mauscript versions. The explanatory notes gloss obscure terms and references. They also provide a rich context for appreciation and interpretation by drawing connections with Klein's life, his wide reading, and his work as a whole. Wherever possible, Klein's own numerous, but scattered, comments on his poems have been cited.

'Although he was not one of the most prolific writers of his time, A.M. Klein has acquired through the excellence of his five books one of the highest literary reputation in North America. His influence on and encouragement of the younger Jewish writers of the United States and Canada is undeniable when we consider the works of such artists as Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, Morecai Richler and numerous others. A.M. Klein's poetry draws heavily on the Jewish-North America experience. He knows the past and his traditions and expresses them with magnificence and density. His awareness of the urban-ethnic predicament and the incredible demands imposed by social difference and personal aspirations expresses itself in literary brilliance. His imagery is uniquely mythopoeic, his structures are truly elaborate ; his knowledge and understanding of the historical and the individual have remark scope and focus. The Collected poems of A.M. Klein is not only composite available collection of the poet's work, it is a testament to Klein's creative genius. He was a scholar, a politician, a social reformer, an artist, a craftsman, a dreamer....There have been very few writers like A.M. Klein.'- Publisher

Throughout his career A.M. Klein struggled to define for himself the role of the poet in the contemporary world. Deeply rooted in the traditions of Judaism, and at the same time powerfully attracted by the freedom and scope of international modernism, he sought to reconcile past and present, community and creative individuality. Whether or not he finally achieved his own high aims, it was, in his own words, 'something merely to entertain them.' The result was a body of work immensely rich and varied in tone, language, cultural resonance. This collection of eighty-four poems offers a representative sampling of Klein's finest poetry, while taking into account the changing critical discourse of the last fifty years. Anyone interested in experiencing the full range of Klein's poetic achievement, or in understanding the complex nature of the poet, need look no further than this eminently readable volume.