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Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems
Bilingual edition, with translations by Assia Gutmann, Harold Schimmel, Chana Bloch, Y.A. & Ted Hughes, David Rosenberg, et al. A new printing of this large collection by the poet commonly regarded as Israel's most prominent and one of the major contemporary world poets. Born in Germany in 1924, Amichai left with his family for Israel in 1936.
280 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1992
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211 people want to read
About the author
Yehuda Amichai
114 books147 followersYehuda Amichai (Hebrew: יהודה עמיחי; 3 May 1924 – 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.
Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s.
(The Times, London, Oct. 2000)
He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 – Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 – Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
Yehuda Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German.
Amichai immigrated with his family at the age of 11 to Petah Tikva in Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936. He attended Ma'aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the defense force of the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine. As a young man he volunteered and fought in World War II as a member of the British Army, and in the Negev on the southern front in the Israeli War of Independence.
After discharge from the British Army in 1946, Amichai was a student at David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem, and became a teacher in Haifa. After the War of Independence, Amichai studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955.
In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur War. Amichai published his first novel, Not of This Time, Not of This Place, in 1963. It was about a young Israeli who was born in Germany, and after World War II, and the war of Independence in Israel, he visits his hometown in Germany, recalls his childhood, trying to make sense of the world that created the Holocaust. His second novel, Mi Yitneni Malon, about an Israeli poet living in New York, was published in 1971 while Amichai was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a poet in residence at New York University in 1987. For many years he taught literature in an Israeli seminar for teachers, and at the Hebrew University to students from abroad.
Amichai was invited in 1994 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to read from his poems at the ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
"God has pity on kindergarten children" was one of the poems he read. This poem is inscribed on a wall in the Rabin Museum in Tel-Aviv. There are Streets on his name in cities in Israel, and also one in Wurzburg.
Amichai was married twice. First to Tamar Horn, with whom he had one son, and then to Chana Sokolov; they had one son and one daughter. His two sons were Ron and David, and his daughter was Emmanuella.
He died of cancer in 2000, at age 76.
Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s.
(The Times, London, Oct. 2000)
He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 – Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 – Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
Yehuda Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German.
Amichai immigrated with his family at the age of 11 to Petah Tikva in Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936. He attended Ma'aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the defense force of the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine. As a young man he volunteered and fought in World War II as a member of the British Army, and in the Negev on the southern front in the Israeli War of Independence.
After discharge from the British Army in 1946, Amichai was a student at David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem, and became a teacher in Haifa. After the War of Independence, Amichai studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955.
In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur War. Amichai published his first novel, Not of This Time, Not of This Place, in 1963. It was about a young Israeli who was born in Germany, and after World War II, and the war of Independence in Israel, he visits his hometown in Germany, recalls his childhood, trying to make sense of the world that created the Holocaust. His second novel, Mi Yitneni Malon, about an Israeli poet living in New York, was published in 1971 while Amichai was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a poet in residence at New York University in 1987. For many years he taught literature in an Israeli seminar for teachers, and at the Hebrew University to students from abroad.
Amichai was invited in 1994 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to read from his poems at the ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
"God has pity on kindergarten children" was one of the poems he read. This poem is inscribed on a wall in the Rabin Museum in Tel-Aviv. There are Streets on his name in cities in Israel, and also one in Wurzburg.
Amichai was married twice. First to Tamar Horn, with whom he had one son, and then to Chana Sokolov; they had one son and one daughter. His two sons were Ron and David, and his daughter was Emmanuella.
He died of cancer in 2000, at age 76.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 23, 2020
Instead of summarizing this beautiful book of poems which I find is an impossible task I offer 2 poems which speak to me, one about Jerusalem, the other about love. There were several other beautiful love poems but I didn't print them here because they are very sexually explicit. (Not quite sure what the rules on GR are about that).
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can't see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
In My Time, In Your Place
We were together in my time, in your place.
You gave the place and I the time.
Quietly your body waited for the seasons to change.
Fashions passed over it- to shorten, to lengthen,
with flowers or in white silk, clinging.
We swapped human values for those of beasts,
calm and tigerlike and forever.
And for all that, ready to burn at any moment
with the dry grass of the end of summer.
I divided the days with you, nights.
We exchanged a look with rain.
We were not like dreamers,
even in our dreams.
And in the unquiet nestled the quiet,
in my time, in your place.
The many dreams I now dream of you
prophesy your end with me-
As the multiplying crowds of sea gulls
come where the sea ends.
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can't see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
In My Time, In Your Place
We were together in my time, in your place.
You gave the place and I the time.
Quietly your body waited for the seasons to change.
Fashions passed over it- to shorten, to lengthen,
with flowers or in white silk, clinging.
We swapped human values for those of beasts,
calm and tigerlike and forever.
And for all that, ready to burn at any moment
with the dry grass of the end of summer.
I divided the days with you, nights.
We exchanged a look with rain.
We were not like dreamers,
even in our dreams.
And in the unquiet nestled the quiet,
in my time, in your place.
The many dreams I now dream of you
prophesy your end with me-
As the multiplying crowds of sea gulls
come where the sea ends.
August 19, 2016
We were together in my time, in your place,
You gave the place and I the time.
Quietly your body waited for the seasons to change.
Fashions passed over it- to shorten, to lengthen,
with flowers or in white silk, clinging.
We swapped human values for those of beasts,
calm and tiger-like and for ever.
And for all that, ready to burn at any moment
with the dry grass of the end of summer.
I divided the days with you, nights.
We exchanged a look with rain,
We were not like dreamers,
even in our dreams.
And in the unquiet, nestled the quiet,
in my time, in your place.
The many dreams I now dream of you
prophesy your end with me-
As the multiplying crowds of sea gulls
come where the sea ends.
You gave the place and I the time.
Quietly your body waited for the seasons to change.
Fashions passed over it- to shorten, to lengthen,
with flowers or in white silk, clinging.
We swapped human values for those of beasts,
calm and tiger-like and for ever.
And for all that, ready to burn at any moment
with the dry grass of the end of summer.
I divided the days with you, nights.
We exchanged a look with rain,
We were not like dreamers,
even in our dreams.
And in the unquiet, nestled the quiet,
in my time, in your place.
The many dreams I now dream of you
prophesy your end with me-
As the multiplying crowds of sea gulls
come where the sea ends.
May 15, 2020
There weren't very poems I liked of this long book, and for a lengthy piece it was difficult when they started to seemed redundant - especially when there was an unpleasant, almost needless, rawness to them. However, this one poem seemed softer than the others - almost like the poet wandered on to a rooftop at night and reminisced about this encounter, which still ends in melancholy, but at least sweetly so. I do want to say, I don't meant to be ignorant of the political situation from which he rights - perhaps two lengthy books of his back to back has been a lot, but he also seems to lack something of that ability of poets to pull back a caul, to lift us off the earth and place us back down disorientated but necessarily so, to force us to confront things but to do so in a way that is definitely not palatable, but is coherent, if still violent. I want that from this poet; I keep waiting.
In My Time, In Your Place
"We were together in my time, in your place.
You gave the place and I the time.
Quietly your body waited for the seasons to change.
Fashions passed over it - to shorten, to lengthen,
with flowers or in white silk, clinging.
We swapped human values for those of beasts,
calm and tigerlike and forever.
And for all that, ready to burn at any moment
with the dry grass of the end of summer.
I divided the days with you, night.
We exchanged a look with rain.
We were not like dreamers,
even in our dreams.
And in the unquiet nestled the quiet,
in my time, in your place.
The many dreams I now dream of you
prophesy your end with me -
As the multiplying crowds of sea gulls
come where the sea ends." (167)
-Yehuda Amichai,
trans. Assia Gutmann
October 9, 2012
I usually stick to fiction and non-fiction, and the occasional screenplay or script...but boy, am I glad I read Amichai's poems...so much so, I bought another collection of his just this week. There are too many lovely moments here to list them all, but I found this book inspirational and beautiful.
October 3, 2010
Some of the most lyrical and sensual poetry I've ever read. "In My Time, In Your Place" and "A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention" are two of my personal favorites.
May 13, 2023
In this beautiful and varied collection the poet demonstrates mastery of themes of both passion and place. Wonderful. The poems of place express both the beauty of Jewish identity and Israeli history, and broad empathy for the Palestinian experience in a shared landscape. The poems on passion deal with both love and obsession. Ted Hughes and others translate the poems so one probably benefits from exposure to a variety of differing approaches to the original Hebrew. I was reading Paterson’s brilliant book, The Poem, prior to reading this collection. I think that work of literary definition and analysis deepened my appreciation for this Israeli poet’s originality and versatility.
November 23, 2018
In the Middle of This Century
In the middle of this century we turned to each other
with half faces and full eyes
like an ancient Egyptian picture
and for a short while.
I stroked your hair
in the opposite direction to your journey,
we called to each other,
like calling out the names of towns
where nobody stops
along the route.
Lovely is the world rising early to evil,
lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity,
in the mingling of ourselves, you and I,
lovely is the world.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine,
to forget.
It can’t.
And like the contours of the Judean hills,
we shall never find peace.
In the middle of this century we turned to each other,
I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me,
the leather straps for a long journey
already tightening across my chest.
I spoke in praise of your mortal hips,
you spoke in praise of my passing face,
I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey,
I touched your flesh, prophet of your end,
I touched your hand which has never slept,
I touched your mouth which may yet sing.
Dust from the desert covered the table
at which we did not eat
but with my finger I wrote on it
the letters of your name.
***
A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention
They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantle us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
***
I was instantly haunted by these Chagall paintings while reading this poem (I know, associating Amichai and Chagall is not original), it’s like they illustrate the metaphors..
https://goo.gl/images/sUyCZR
https://goo.gl/images/saR7oB
https://goo.gl/images/wEihFg
https://goo.gl/images/aV4WGJ
Politics and history has also largely influenced his poetry. The poem Jerusalem is my favourite in this collection:
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can't see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
***
The religion is embedded in Amichai’s poetry.
Two Quatrains
I
Once i escaped, but i do not remember why or from which God,
I shall therefore travel through my life like Jonah in his dark fish,
We’ve settled it between us, I and the fish, we’re both in the world’s bowels,
I shall not come out, he will not digest me.
***
God’s Fate
God’s fate
Is now
The fate of trees rocks sun and moon,
The ones they stopped worshipping
When they began to believe in God.
But he’s forced to remain with us
As are the trees, as are the rocks
Sun moon and stars.
***
According to Chana Kronfeld, his long time friend and translator, the intertextuality with the Jewish texts underlie Amichai’s poetics. However, one of the major observations that she makes is that his poems are largely misinterpreted and misunderstood by his readers. In fact, his intertextual practices consist of iconoclastic allusions to sacred texts, Biblical narratives and rabbinical exegesis. In this matter, “the great popularity of his poetry in the United States has been accompanied by some readerly obtuseness to what this poetry actually says and does.(..) Amichai’s poems are embraced by American readers who, knowing very little about the sacred texts he takes apart, remain unaware of—and uninterested in—his resistant, anticlerical poetics and are lulled into complacency by the apparent simplicity of his poems’ surface. The mere reference to prayers, God, and the Bible in his poetry has qualified him for the role of a religious Jewish poet laureate for the Jewish American community. Thus, Amichai’s poetry is not infrequently used to provide readers in the United States with something textual to hold onto, either as a marker of some fuzzy, feel-good Jewish identity or, more generally, for its pleasantly vague sense of Old World tradition.”
Moreover, Amichai’s poetry contains surprising sacrilegious images, according to Yoseph Milman. In his review published by the Cambridge University Press, Milman examines two poems titled “The Bar Mitzvah Celebration” and “The Voyeur” and he asserts that the poet “associates expressions, motifs, and concepts taken from the area of religion and holy texts with sexual motifs more appropriate to erotic or pornographic literature.”
I was intrigued by a sense of fragmentation that pervades his poems. Several poems reveal a persona scattered throughout space and time..
My Parent’s Migration
And my parents’ migration has not yet calmed in me.
My blood goes on shaking at its walls,
As the bowl after it is set down.
And my parents’ migration has not yet calmed in me,
Winds continually over stones.
Earth forgets the footsteps of those who walk,
An awful fate, stumps of talk after midnight,
An achievement, a retreat. Night reminds
And day forgets.
My eyes which have looked a long time into a vast desert,
Are a little calmed. One woman. The ruled of a game
Nobody had ever completely explained. The laws of pain and weight.
Even now my heart
Makes only a bare living
With its daily love.
My parents in their migration.
On the crossroads where I am forever orphaned,
Too young to die, too old to play.
The weariness of the miner
The emptiness of the quarry
In one body.
Archaeology of the future
Museums of what is still to happen.
And my parents’ migration has not yet calmed in me,
And from bitter peoples I learned bitter languages
For my silence among the houses
Which are always
Like ships.
Already my veins, my tendons
Are a tangle of ropes i will never undo
Finally, my own
Death
And an end to my parents’ migration.
***
While reading his poems I got the impression that his multiple cultural identities and departures have instilled bitterness and melancholy in his psyche and left him victim of endless existential dilemmas.. He crafts images that oscillate between presence and absence, imagination and reality, modern and traditional, memory and oblivion, past and present, the self and the other, all which try to cohere throughout the span of the poem.
Tim Ellison describes brilliantly how Amichai’s poetic attempts to deal with the divergent elements of life:
Ruins are crucial to Amichai’s poetry—ancient ruins, the ruins of homes destroyed by war, ruined relationships—but only because they provide witness to the persistence of things. Our very bodies, he insinuates, are the ruins of our ancestry, and in dreams we are the meeting ground of the living and the dead. The self is a marriage of past and present—not just the self as such but the dreaming self in particular, the painted self, the adventuring self that goes out to ruins to sit and think in quiet about what has passed from the earth. It is once again imagination that awakens and enlivens things, rescuing people and places from the knife of time and giving them a space between life and death to dwell in.
The Holocaust, of course, was a cruel twist of fate and this historical tragical event has had a major effect on his life.. he lost members of his family, friends and his childhood love, Ruth, who couldn’t obtain an immigration visa to the States and perished later in a death camp.. she remains a haunting presence throughout his poignant poems.
N.B. I didn’t realize until later while I was reading some reviews that the translator Assia Gutmann is actually Assia Wevill, Ted Hughe’s mistress, who committed suicide (the tragic incident caused also the death of their daughter) like also did his wife, the poet Sylvia Plath (who suffered from a severe depression because of their relationship)..
In the middle of this century we turned to each other
with half faces and full eyes
like an ancient Egyptian picture
and for a short while.
I stroked your hair
in the opposite direction to your journey,
we called to each other,
like calling out the names of towns
where nobody stops
along the route.
Lovely is the world rising early to evil,
lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity,
in the mingling of ourselves, you and I,
lovely is the world.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine,
to forget.
It can’t.
And like the contours of the Judean hills,
we shall never find peace.
In the middle of this century we turned to each other,
I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me,
the leather straps for a long journey
already tightening across my chest.
I spoke in praise of your mortal hips,
you spoke in praise of my passing face,
I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey,
I touched your flesh, prophet of your end,
I touched your hand which has never slept,
I touched your mouth which may yet sing.
Dust from the desert covered the table
at which we did not eat
but with my finger I wrote on it
the letters of your name.
***
A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention
They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantle us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
***
I was instantly haunted by these Chagall paintings while reading this poem (I know, associating Amichai and Chagall is not original), it’s like they illustrate the metaphors..
https://goo.gl/images/sUyCZR
https://goo.gl/images/saR7oB
https://goo.gl/images/wEihFg
https://goo.gl/images/aV4WGJ
Politics and history has also largely influenced his poetry. The poem Jerusalem is my favourite in this collection:
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can't see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
***
The religion is embedded in Amichai’s poetry.
Two Quatrains
I
Once i escaped, but i do not remember why or from which God,
I shall therefore travel through my life like Jonah in his dark fish,
We’ve settled it between us, I and the fish, we’re both in the world’s bowels,
I shall not come out, he will not digest me.
***
God’s Fate
God’s fate
Is now
The fate of trees rocks sun and moon,
The ones they stopped worshipping
When they began to believe in God.
But he’s forced to remain with us
As are the trees, as are the rocks
Sun moon and stars.
***
According to Chana Kronfeld, his long time friend and translator, the intertextuality with the Jewish texts underlie Amichai’s poetics. However, one of the major observations that she makes is that his poems are largely misinterpreted and misunderstood by his readers. In fact, his intertextual practices consist of iconoclastic allusions to sacred texts, Biblical narratives and rabbinical exegesis. In this matter, “the great popularity of his poetry in the United States has been accompanied by some readerly obtuseness to what this poetry actually says and does.(..) Amichai’s poems are embraced by American readers who, knowing very little about the sacred texts he takes apart, remain unaware of—and uninterested in—his resistant, anticlerical poetics and are lulled into complacency by the apparent simplicity of his poems’ surface. The mere reference to prayers, God, and the Bible in his poetry has qualified him for the role of a religious Jewish poet laureate for the Jewish American community. Thus, Amichai’s poetry is not infrequently used to provide readers in the United States with something textual to hold onto, either as a marker of some fuzzy, feel-good Jewish identity or, more generally, for its pleasantly vague sense of Old World tradition.”
Moreover, Amichai’s poetry contains surprising sacrilegious images, according to Yoseph Milman. In his review published by the Cambridge University Press, Milman examines two poems titled “The Bar Mitzvah Celebration” and “The Voyeur” and he asserts that the poet “associates expressions, motifs, and concepts taken from the area of religion and holy texts with sexual motifs more appropriate to erotic or pornographic literature.”
I was intrigued by a sense of fragmentation that pervades his poems. Several poems reveal a persona scattered throughout space and time..
My Parent’s Migration
And my parents’ migration has not yet calmed in me.
My blood goes on shaking at its walls,
As the bowl after it is set down.
And my parents’ migration has not yet calmed in me,
Winds continually over stones.
Earth forgets the footsteps of those who walk,
An awful fate, stumps of talk after midnight,
An achievement, a retreat. Night reminds
And day forgets.
My eyes which have looked a long time into a vast desert,
Are a little calmed. One woman. The ruled of a game
Nobody had ever completely explained. The laws of pain and weight.
Even now my heart
Makes only a bare living
With its daily love.
My parents in their migration.
On the crossroads where I am forever orphaned,
Too young to die, too old to play.
The weariness of the miner
The emptiness of the quarry
In one body.
Archaeology of the future
Museums of what is still to happen.
And my parents’ migration has not yet calmed in me,
And from bitter peoples I learned bitter languages
For my silence among the houses
Which are always
Like ships.
Already my veins, my tendons
Are a tangle of ropes i will never undo
Finally, my own
Death
And an end to my parents’ migration.
***
While reading his poems I got the impression that his multiple cultural identities and departures have instilled bitterness and melancholy in his psyche and left him victim of endless existential dilemmas.. He crafts images that oscillate between presence and absence, imagination and reality, modern and traditional, memory and oblivion, past and present, the self and the other, all which try to cohere throughout the span of the poem.
Tim Ellison describes brilliantly how Amichai’s poetic attempts to deal with the divergent elements of life:
Ruins are crucial to Amichai’s poetry—ancient ruins, the ruins of homes destroyed by war, ruined relationships—but only because they provide witness to the persistence of things. Our very bodies, he insinuates, are the ruins of our ancestry, and in dreams we are the meeting ground of the living and the dead. The self is a marriage of past and present—not just the self as such but the dreaming self in particular, the painted self, the adventuring self that goes out to ruins to sit and think in quiet about what has passed from the earth. It is once again imagination that awakens and enlivens things, rescuing people and places from the knife of time and giving them a space between life and death to dwell in.
The Holocaust, of course, was a cruel twist of fate and this historical tragical event has had a major effect on his life.. he lost members of his family, friends and his childhood love, Ruth, who couldn’t obtain an immigration visa to the States and perished later in a death camp.. she remains a haunting presence throughout his poignant poems.
N.B. I didn’t realize until later while I was reading some reviews that the translator Assia Gutmann is actually Assia Wevill, Ted Hughe’s mistress, who committed suicide (the tragic incident caused also the death of their daughter) like also did his wife, the poet Sylvia Plath (who suffered from a severe depression because of their relationship)..
December 21, 2007
reminiscent of 12th century persian poetry in it style, but very pointed and contemporary in its subject matter
December 12, 2015
Read and reread, often. It's an excellent translation. Amichai's poetry captures the essence of being in Jerusalem and makes me feel I'm there.
July 1, 2020
I specifically read this compilation of Yehuda Amichai's work, as the original and translation are presented side by side. As a native English speaker who is fluent in Hebrew, this format is very helpful, as I can read the original and reference the translation for things I may have missed, especially if in "literary" Hebrew. Quite honestly, most of the translation is fine, but for a few of the poems, biblical references were left untranslated. I likely wouldn't recommend that anyone read Amichai's work in translation, as they would miss so much context.
November 11, 2020
Some of the poems I had read and learned before. Some poems I read for the first time. And many poems made me blush !
May 12, 2015
Jerusalem..rose of cities, sacred to three religions..the city of peace that has never known peace..
this is my first reading of an Israeli poet, all my previous readings about Jerusalem were by Arab poets, some live in the city and others long for it..I myself wrote about Jerusalem..for my love for it is beyond words..
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can't see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
this is my first reading of an Israeli poet, all my previous readings about Jerusalem were by Arab poets, some live in the city and others long for it..I myself wrote about Jerusalem..for my love for it is beyond words..
Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.
In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can't see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they're happy.
To make them think that we're happy.
October 26, 2016
Really quite a fan of this guy. I got the bilingual edition so that I could practice reading the Hebrew out loud to get a better feel for his work, and highly suggest it. Of course, now I'm spoiled for everyday modern Hebrew, and translators are traitors, but the point is the work is good enough in English to make you cry, and in Hebrew, it's even more sublime. Love? Pain? Longing? War-and-Peace? Yehuda Amichai's your man.
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October 26, 2007already made me cry...
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