"A young Jewish boy strolls through Vienna and witnesses acts of anti-Semitism during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. At night he dreams of a superhero, Judah Maccabee, who appears to defend Vienna's Jews. When he awakes, he knows there will be no Maccabean rescue and he weeps. Years pass, the boy, now an old man, returns to Vienna and sees the Jewish community and the Temple have been restored. He looks for the eternal light in his Temple and can't find it. Then suddenly it becomes clear to him: The light was there all the time; it was in his own heart"--

Poetry. DAY AND NIGHT collects Aram Saroyan's poems written in Bolinas in the 70s and 80s when he was a part of the well-known writers' community there. Previously, Saroyan was known for very short poems -- as, for example, his one-word poem "lighght" which became the subject of ongoing decades-long government and public debate after being chosen for a National Endowoment for the Arts Poetry Award by Robert Duncan in 1968. DAY AND NIGHT includes Saroyan's longer work. "As a writer in Bolinas, I eventually moved from an initial concentration on poetry into prose. As this happened, my poetry became more sporadic, and, I hope, as befits the passage from 28 to 37 years old, deepened. The title poem of this collection, "Day and Night," was also the last I worte in Bolinas ..." ("Afterword'). A past president of PEN Center West, Saroyan is a faculty member of the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC. He lives with his family in Santa Monica. 3/19/99

Collection of poems, memoirs, articles, translated foreword, and excerpts from talks by the Sri Lankan author; includes one biographical article on her.