Poems for a Cartoon Mouse

<p>While the poems in this collection are inspired by the story of Fievel Mousekewitz the cartoon mouse of the author's childhood they are gut-wrenching in their examination of the American dream. Fievel's family history-and the author's-is one of a Jewish family immigrating from the Old World to the New and eventually being pulled across the plains: When migrant boys looked west in leather hats their slang pierced with Polish accents. Even though tomorrow is made of rocks and time; is the draft that sweeps sleepily through the fallen branches it is also where immigrants watch their dreams decompose on plywood as they search for whatever it is that makes men free.</p><p><br></p><p>Using the story of Fievel Burt plays masterfully with the ambivalence of hope and cynicism as if he had traversed the ocean and the continent westwards himself: I am the hope that has not been forgotten because I declare myself welcome here as if there is nothing in history I will not make mine.</p>