Joseph Bovshover 1873-1915
Joseph Bovshover
line Born in Lubavitch, near Mogilev, White Russia, in a very Orthodox family, but left for America at age 18, and became a furrier in New York. He had a good job but began to write anarchist, revolutionarly poems in Yiddish and to read them aloud in his "shop." He was fired and worked as a journalist and tutor. He was considered the heir of Edelshtat, who had just died. Bovshover knew English very well and translated his own poetry and published it in English languge periodicals. As a result he achieved some fame in the non-Jewish world too, but soon after began to suffer from a mental illness, and entered a mental hospital in 1899, where he remained until his death. His poetry, like Edelshtat's, was anarchist and revolutionary, and became popular thoughout the Jewish world.