Chana Bloch (1940-2017) *77

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was an American poet, translator, and scholar. She was a professor emerita of English at Mills College in Oakland, California. Bloch was a second-generation American whose parents, observant Jews, immigrated from Eastern European origin. Bloch later identified herself as a Jewish humanist.

Bloch earned her B.A. from Cornell University, her M.A. degrees in Judaic Studies and English literature from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught at Mills College for over thirty years (1973–2005) and directed their Creative Writing Program. Bloch held residencies at the Bellagio Center for Scholars and Artists, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She gave lectures and poetry readings at numerous U.S. colleges and universities.

Bloch published five collections of her poetry: The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty, Blood Honey. and Swimming in the Rain. A sixth book is scheduled for publication in Fall 2017, The Moon Is Almost Full. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation and included in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize and other anthologies. She was the poetry editor of Persimmon Tree, an online journal of the arts by women over sixty.

She was co-translator, with Ariel Bloch, of the biblical Song of Songs. She translated works by modern Hebrew poets including The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai with Stephen Mitchell, and Amichai's Open Closed Open, as well as Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch with Chana Kronfeld. Bloch was also the author of the critical study, Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible.

Chana's Story, a song cycle by David Del Tredici based on her work, premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

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