Ghetto, was killed when fighting broke out between the Nazi's and the ghetto fighters. Furthermore, when it was time for Irena and her mother to flee, they had to pass as gentiles. Her mother speaking fluent Polish made this possible, and it was in this change that Klepfiz finds the crux of her crisis with the loss of her culture and her displacement in this world. These feelings of displacement are especially apparent in the powerful poem Searching for My Father's Body. This poem is a narrative that shows a semblance of rhythm and it describes her quest and inability to come to terms with her father's violent death. The beginning describes her search for her father's name among death records hoping that it will bring some closure to her uncertainty. "I smell again the burning bodies see the flames, wade through sewers in a last desperate effort, till some present distraction, like hunger or cold, draws me back and I begin closing windows and preparing dinner." (30)
             This particular part vividly shows her switching between worlds. On one hand she desperately wants to gain a sense of closure about her fathers death, which pulls her into the past. Yet, this is hindered by every day things that are representative of the new life she has come to live in America. This recognition and inability to forget the past is a very strong tendency in Klepfisz's other poems as well. At this point it is interesting to note that Klepfisz was only two at the time of her fathers death, and after the war she was raised in America. This begs the question; how much of our reality is real and how much is imagined? I propose that in Klepfisz's case it is both imagined and real. While it is true that she w
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