And in That Drowning Instant

Canadian poet and novelist Abraham Moses Klein was born in Ratno (now in Ukraine) and raised in the immigrant Jewish district of Montreal. He studied classics and political science at McGill University and law at the Université de Montréal. Klein published poetry and prose in Canadian and American periodicals as a student and practiced law until his retirement in 1956. He was active in the Canadian Jewish community as a speaker, writer, and educator, and he edited the weekly Canadian Jewish Chronicle from 1938 to 1955. He was a visiting lecturer in poetry at McGill University (1945–1948) and associated with the Preview circle of poets in Montreal. In the early 1950s, he suffered from depression and gradually withdrew from public life.