By Scott Brinton
Barkan has already published the works of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kunitz in Italian, Polish and Bulgarian. Now, said Barkan, the objective is to create a stir abroad and give Kunitz, a leading figure among modern American poets, the recognition he needs to make a run at the Nobel.
Barkan has Serbian, Ukrainian and French editions of Kunitz's poetry in the works, and he may come out with Chinese, Yiddish and Bengali volumes in the near future as well.
Kunitz turns 98 this June. "By his 100th birthday, I'd like him to have the Nobel," said Barkan last week as he sat in the library of his Gables neighborhood, Spanish-style home, dressed very much as a poet, all in black with a silver medallion dangling from his neck.
The competition for literature's greatest prize, however, is incredibly stiff, with acclaimed writers from around the globe seeking the honor. Cross-Cultural Communications, the small-press publishing house that Barkan runs out of his home, doesn't have the financial resources to lobby for Kunitz the way the big publishers do.
Barkan, however, isn't one to shy away from a fight, and he believes deeply in his mission to promote Kunitz worldwide. Master poets such as Kunitz, Barkan said, transcend culture and time. "I believe these people are poets for all people," he said.
Barkan's effort to get Kunitz the Nobel Prize is but one of many projects that the 66-year-old publisher is taking on in his retirement from the New York City Schools as an English as a Second Language teacher.
Since leaving the city schools in 1991, Barkan has published five major volumes of his own poetry, including "O Jerusalem" in 1996; "Under the Apple Tree," in Polish and English, in 1998; "Bubbemeises & Babbaluci," in Italian and English, with illustrations by his artist wife, Bebe Barkan, in 2001; and "Naming the Birds," in Bulgarian, last summer.
Just last week, Barkan published "Mishpocheh" (Yiddish for family), in English and Polish, with paintings by his wife, who serves as Cross-Cultural Communications' art director. The 31 poems in the collection deal with his family members, seemingly ordinary people who are elevated to heroes through Barkan's powerful imagery.
In "Mishpocheh," Barkan's poems are often stories of poverty and desperation. In "Hope Chest," for example, Barkan wrote, "In the long cedar chest,/ painted green with stencils of red cherubs and harps and hearts,/ she stored all of her hopes for a future beyond the tenements,/ the streets of sweltering summers,/ children full of phlegm and flu in the winters of broken radiators."
Barkan's Jewish heritage figures prominently in his work. Barkan said he considers himself a "Jewish poet, not just a poet who happens to be Jewish."
In all, Barkan has 11 volumes of poetry to his credit, and he expects to publish three more bilingual volumes of his work this year. No one who knows Barkan well would be surprised by how busy he remains some 12 years after "retirement."
He started Cross-Cultural Communications in 1971 as an educational institute offering classes in 27 languages at Long Island University's Brooklyn Center. The institute folded after two years. Out of it, however, Barkan's publishing house was born.
Since then, Cross-Cultural Communications has released more than 300 titles in 50 languages -- more than 10 per year. The poets in his "family" of writers range from the entirely unknown to the world-famous -- including the Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, beat-generation icon Allen Ginsberg and Pulitzer Prize-winners Louis Simpson, Henry Taylor and Kunitz.
In 1990 and '91, Cross-Cultural Communications and the United Nations Society of Writers teamed up and organized a series of poetry readings and lectures at the U.N., including a presentation by Ginsberg.
In 1996, the Small Press Center in New York City honored Cross-Cultural Communications with its Poor Richard's Award "for a quarter century of high-quality publishing."
Barkan, who runs his publishing house with help from a 40-member board, sells to universities, book collectors, poets and literature lovers around the world. Prices for his volumes range from $5 for a pocket-sized edition to $500 for a hand-illustrated, boxed set of poems.
Profits from publishing poetry internationally, however, are minimal. Over the years, Barkan has depended on grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and the New York State Council on the Arts to keep Cross-Cultural Communications afloat.
Barkan, who grew up in Brooklyn, earned his master's degree in linguistics from and completed doctoral studies at New York University. In 1991, the New York City Board of Education and Poets House in the city honored him as Poetry Teacher of the Year. He has also been a fellow of the Stichting in Amsterdam and the Jerusalem Book Fair.
His daughter Mia Barkan Clarke, of Long Beach, is an art therapist with the New York City Schools who also has a studio in Bellmore. She recently held a show, "Reflections," with her mother, Bebe, at the Paterson Museum in New Jersey. Included in the exhibition were paintings, drawings and sculptures.
Barkan's son Scotte, of Merrick, holds a degree in electrical engineering and is now an Internet software designer.
Barkan said he started Cross-Cultural Communications with the "naive" aim of promoting world peace through the arts. With no end to global violence in sight, however, he now sees himself as creating "time capsules" with each volume of poetry he publishes, hoping that peace might one day prevail.
To obtain more information about Cross-Cultural Communications' offerings, write to Stanley Barkan at 239 Wynsum Ave., Merrick, NY 11566, or call (516) 868-5635.
