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The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
The largest English-language collection to date from Israel’s finest poet
Few poets have demonstrated as persuasively as Yehuda Amichai why poetry matters. One of the major poets of the twentieth century, Amichai created remarkably accessible poems, vivid in their evocation of the Israeli landscape and historical predicament, yet universally resonant. His are some of the most moving love poems written in any language in the past two generations―some exuberant, some powerfully erotic, many suffused with sadness over separation that casts its shadow on love. In a country torn by armed conflict, these poems poignantly assert the preciousness of private experience, cherished under the repeated threats of violence and death.
Amichai’s poetry has attracted a variety of gifted English translators on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the present. Assembled by the award-winning Hebrew scholar and translator Robert Alter, The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai is by far the largest selection of the master poet’s work to appear in English, gathering the best of the existing translations as well as offering English versions of many previously untranslated poems. With this collection, Amichai’s vital poetic voice is now available to English readers as it never has been before.
Few poets have demonstrated as persuasively as Yehuda Amichai why poetry matters. One of the major poets of the twentieth century, Amichai created remarkably accessible poems, vivid in their evocation of the Israeli landscape and historical predicament, yet universally resonant. His are some of the most moving love poems written in any language in the past two generations―some exuberant, some powerfully erotic, many suffused with sadness over separation that casts its shadow on love. In a country torn by armed conflict, these poems poignantly assert the preciousness of private experience, cherished under the repeated threats of violence and death.
Amichai’s poetry has attracted a variety of gifted English translators on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the present. Assembled by the award-winning Hebrew scholar and translator Robert Alter, The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai is by far the largest selection of the master poet’s work to appear in English, gathering the best of the existing translations as well as offering English versions of many previously untranslated poems. With this collection, Amichai’s vital poetic voice is now available to English readers as it never has been before.
576 pages, Hardcover
First published November 3, 2015
67 people are currently reading
953 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 - 30 of 40 reviews
February 20, 2021
He thinks he’ll write for a while, until he sees
What in truth his line of work is for.
"Poet", Two Hopes Away (1958)
The Two of Us Together and Each of Us Alone
“The two of them together and each of them alone.”
—from a rental contract
Another summer, my girl, is over and gone,
And Dad didn’t come to Luna Park to play.
Still, all the swings go on swinging away.
The two of us together and each of us alone.
The sea’s horizon keeps losing its ships—
Holding onto anything now is hard indeed.
The fighters are waiting behind the hills.
Compassion is what we dearly need.
The two of us together and each of us alone.
The moon is sawing the clouds in half.
Come, let’s step forth for a lovers’ duel.
Just the two of us at love before the warring camps.
It still may be possible to change it all.
The two of us together and each of us alone.
My love turns me like a salt sea, it seems,
Into sweet drops of autumn’s first rain.
I’m brought to you slowly as I fall. Take me in.
For us there’s no angel who will come to redeem.
For we are together. Each of us alone.
from Now and in Other Days (1955)
*
Sorrow and Joy
Sorrow and joy alternating
like water and vapor and ice,
sorrow and joy from the same substance.
We knew.
Love and unlove, two colors
in a single rose, it’s wonderful,
an achievement of the rose’s cultivator
whose name stays with the rose.
Many years later we met again
without pain, each of us with our own tranquillity.
That was the Garden of Eden
but it was also hell.
from The Fist, Too, Was Once an Open Hand and Fingers (1989)
*
Peace of Mind, Peace and Mind
“Peace of mind,” my parents used to say,
“A person needs to have peace of mind.”
Like rich Arabs who spend winters in Jericho
and summers in Ramallah and forget the desert in between,
they too are forgetters of the in-between. Or when you carry
a sleeping child from the place he fell asleep to his bed
without waking him. Or like a man who places a bomb
and goes so far away he can’t even hear the echo of his act.
A woman once said to me: I am living in peace
outside history. And I said to her: That’s just what Rahab said,
“I’m living on the wall,” and look how
she entered history and hasn’t come out.
Peace of mind, peace and mind. I want
just once to be inside the room
I see every evening from where I work.
The shade is always drawn and sometimes there’s light within.
I’ve lived long enough to want
just that, and not the kingdom of heaven.
from A Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers (1980)
* May 21, 19-Feb 16, 21
** I struggled with the last book, so I can't decide whether it’s a 3.5 or a 4-star rating.
Read
February 29, 2020Two of my favourite poems by Yehuda Amichai
God-Full-of-Mercy, The Prayer For the Dead
If God was not full of mercy,
Mercy would have been in the world,
Not just in Him.
I, who plucked flowers in the hills
And looked down into all the valleys,
I, who brought corpses down from the hills,
Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy.
I, who was King of Salt at the seashore,
Who stood without a decision at my window,
Who counted the steps of angels,
Whose heart lifted weights of anguish
In the horrible contests.
I, who use only a small part
Of the words in the dictionary.
I, who must decipher riddles
I don't want to decipher,
Know that if not for the God-full-of-mercy
There would be mercy in the world,
Not just in Him.
Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I Walked Past A House Where I Lived Once
I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.
The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.
I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.
I want to be filled with longing again
till dark burn marks show on my skin.
I want to be written again
in the Book of Life, to be written every single day
till the writing hand hurts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Each time I re-read this, I receive a good soul-scraping.
I carry them around with me like British civilians in the Second World War carried around their gas masks.
It was always there: an appendage, and a weight that after a while became invisible; and that despite its invisibility became a necessary burden which one absolutely could not give up. Without it, one couldn't breathe. Without it, one lost all hope. But with the talisman strapped on, one could still look for tomorrow's sun to shine, amid the ruins.
Despite the despair and seeming hopelessness, Amichai gives me hope that the sun will shine, amid the ruins.
(It's taken such a long time to find these words, having finished a few collections of his works almost a month ago.)
Thank you Other Julie for the introduction.
God-Full-of-Mercy, The Prayer For the Dead
If God was not full of mercy,
Mercy would have been in the world,
Not just in Him.
I, who plucked flowers in the hills
And looked down into all the valleys,
I, who brought corpses down from the hills,
Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy.
I, who was King of Salt at the seashore,
Who stood without a decision at my window,
Who counted the steps of angels,
Whose heart lifted weights of anguish
In the horrible contests.
I, who use only a small part
Of the words in the dictionary.
I, who must decipher riddles
I don't want to decipher,
Know that if not for the God-full-of-mercy
There would be mercy in the world,
Not just in Him.
Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I Walked Past A House Where I Lived Once
I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.
The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.
I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.
I want to be filled with longing again
till dark burn marks show on my skin.
I want to be written again
in the Book of Life, to be written every single day
till the writing hand hurts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Each time I re-read this, I receive a good soul-scraping.
I carry them around with me like British civilians in the Second World War carried around their gas masks.
It was always there: an appendage, and a weight that after a while became invisible; and that despite its invisibility became a necessary burden which one absolutely could not give up. Without it, one couldn't breathe. Without it, one lost all hope. But with the talisman strapped on, one could still look for tomorrow's sun to shine, amid the ruins.
Despite the despair and seeming hopelessness, Amichai gives me hope that the sun will shine, amid the ruins.
(It's taken such a long time to find these words, having finished a few collections of his works almost a month ago.)
Thank you Other Julie for the introduction.
October 24, 2025
A collection of the sublime. Upon completing this selected (it's NOT a Collected) and The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai edited by Bloch and Mitchell, I can say without reservation that Amichai has skyrocketed into position as one of my favorite poets of all time. The HUGE advantage of this text over the Bloch and Mitchell is the inclusion of poems from Amichai's magisterial last work Open, Closed, Open. The poems selected from that collection are some of the finest I've ever read in any language. They are funny and sad and full of longing. Those ALONE are worth the price of this book. I defy anyone who loves poetry and life to read the poems in Open, Closed, Open and NOT feel like you've been as in touch with the sublime as when listening to Mozart, standing before a Rothko, or at the foot of a sequoia.
Alter, the translator of Jewish texts par excellence recently, has also INCLUDED some of the translations from Bloch and Mitchell.
THAT SAID, there are MANY poems in the Bloch and Mitchell Selected which are NOT included here which are TREMENDOUS. This merely speaks to the need (am I being too demanding after getting this gift from Alter?) for a Collected for Amichai. In the meantime, buying both books is well worth the money.
I'm left wondering why Amichai never received a Nobel? It's certainly not an issue with the quality of his work or his prolificacy. Obviously, politics plays a role in such decisions, but I can sleep at night knowing that Amichai won his share of awards, and more importantly, is held with tremendous love and respect in the hearts of his poetry peers.
Alter, the translator of Jewish texts par excellence recently, has also INCLUDED some of the translations from Bloch and Mitchell.
THAT SAID, there are MANY poems in the Bloch and Mitchell Selected which are NOT included here which are TREMENDOUS. This merely speaks to the need (am I being too demanding after getting this gift from Alter?) for a Collected for Amichai. In the meantime, buying both books is well worth the money.
I'm left wondering why Amichai never received a Nobel? It's certainly not an issue with the quality of his work or his prolificacy. Obviously, politics plays a role in such decisions, but I can sleep at night knowing that Amichai won his share of awards, and more importantly, is held with tremendous love and respect in the hearts of his poetry peers.
August 23, 2018
Yehudi Amichai's poetry strikes at my very core.
His illuminations and ruminating prose is intense, yet gentle, often bold, yet with a caring voice. He reflects on many issues, that are pertinent not only in moments past, but also in today's world.
Social justice/injustice, love and loss, Holocaust and anger, sex, children, women, the military, Jerusalem, daily life, and so much more are woven within the tapestry of his beautiful poems.
It is difficult to articulate my thoughts and feelings regarding 'The Poetry of Yehudi Amichai".
Suffice it to say that, although the copy I read was an e-book, from my library, I have ordered a hardcopy for my personal library.
That should say it all.
His illuminations and ruminating prose is intense, yet gentle, often bold, yet with a caring voice. He reflects on many issues, that are pertinent not only in moments past, but also in today's world.
Social justice/injustice, love and loss, Holocaust and anger, sex, children, women, the military, Jerusalem, daily life, and so much more are woven within the tapestry of his beautiful poems.
It is difficult to articulate my thoughts and feelings regarding 'The Poetry of Yehudi Amichai".
Suffice it to say that, although the copy I read was an e-book, from my library, I have ordered a hardcopy for my personal library.
That should say it all.
February 16, 2016
Gorgeous collection of most celebrated Israeli poet's work. So many in here I love -- especially where he questions his connections to Judaism, and religion in general. His set of poems on Jerusalem are stunning.
May 21, 2021
Wonderful. My most favorite of the collection, below.
"The Place Where We Are Right"
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
"The Place Where We Are Right"
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
November 20, 2021
Words can't describe the impact of these poems - i am shaken up, smiling, crying at the same time
This is pure beauty, honestly
I never heard about Amichai's work, and read it because i wanted to know new poets
I don't regret it at all
Every single poem resonated in me ; even when he talked about his faith, while i don't believe in God ; or when he talked about Jerusalem for exemple
I can only tell you to read it as soon as you can, you won't regret it
This is pure beauty, honestly
I never heard about Amichai's work, and read it because i wanted to know new poets
I don't regret it at all
Every single poem resonated in me ; even when he talked about his faith, while i don't believe in God ; or when he talked about Jerusalem for exemple
I can only tell you to read it as soon as you can, you won't regret it
October 3, 2019
I really wish I had more patience for poetry than I do. But I don't. There are some really wonderful verses here but most of the poems in this book simply didn't work for me. This gap in my readerly interests annoys and distresses me, but it's possible that I am just not a poetry person.
November 23, 2020
They are beautifully translated into English. I think the translators had done a good job capturing and retaining the "poetic" part of the poems. Made me wonder how was it like in in original language, could it be even more heart capturing ?
May 31, 2017
Great book
August 2, 2025
"The Place Where We Are Right"
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
"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.
"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 dismantled 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 of a man and a woman,
wings and all:
we hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
"All the Generations Before Me"
All the generations before me donated me little by little so I’d rise up all at
once in Jerusalem
like a house of prayer or a charitable institution.
That’s a big obligation. My name
is the name of my donors.
That’s a big obligation.
I am getting close to the age
when my father died.
My will is patched in many
places.
Each day I have to change my
life and my death
to fulfill all the prophecies
that prophesied me. So they
won’t be lies.
That’s a big obligation.
I have passed my fortieth year.
There are
places where I wouldn’t be hired
for that very reason. If I’d been
in Auschwitz,
they wouldn’t have sent me to
work,
they would have burned me on
the spot.
That’s a big obligation.
"My Father, My King"
My father, my king, groundless
love and groundless hatred
have made my face resemble the
face of this ruined land.
The years have transformed me
into a pain taster.
Like a wine taster I distinguish
between varieties of silence,
knowing what is dead, and who.
My father, my king, act so that
my face will not be ripped apart
by laughter or by tears.
My father, my king, act so that I
will not be tormented
by all that befalls me
between desire and sadness; and
so that
all that I do against my will
will seem like my will. And my
will like flowers.
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
"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.
"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 dismantled 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 of a man and a woman,
wings and all:
we hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
"All the Generations Before Me"
All the generations before me donated me little by little so I’d rise up all at
once in Jerusalem
like a house of prayer or a charitable institution.
That’s a big obligation. My name
is the name of my donors.
That’s a big obligation.
I am getting close to the age
when my father died.
My will is patched in many
places.
Each day I have to change my
life and my death
to fulfill all the prophecies
that prophesied me. So they
won’t be lies.
That’s a big obligation.
I have passed my fortieth year.
There are
places where I wouldn’t be hired
for that very reason. If I’d been
in Auschwitz,
they wouldn’t have sent me to
work,
they would have burned me on
the spot.
That’s a big obligation.
"My Father, My King"
My father, my king, groundless
love and groundless hatred
have made my face resemble the
face of this ruined land.
The years have transformed me
into a pain taster.
Like a wine taster I distinguish
between varieties of silence,
knowing what is dead, and who.
My father, my king, act so that
my face will not be ripped apart
by laughter or by tears.
My father, my king, act so that I
will not be tormented
by all that befalls me
between desire and sadness; and
so that
all that I do against my will
will seem like my will. And my
will like flowers.
April 21, 2018
A Hebrew poet who wrote intimately about Judaism, Jerusalem, and the body, Amichai moved from Germany to Palestine with his parents in 1936, when he was 12. The area was wracked with wars throughout his life and they are a frequent topic of his poetry. As is his pubic hair. An evocative poem about grief and the passage of time might be followed by one talking about genitalia. Sex. Or childhood. Amichai plays with grammar and syntax as much as rhyme scheme, and my hat is off to the translators who have to massage these complicated images from one language to another. Overall, the poetry is very accessible and you can glean a reasonable amount of meaning from it in one or two readings. The only things I didn't like was the incessant pubic hair and his representation of women; they often were presented as just extensions of the male viewer/narrators's desires and not as separate, autonomous beings. A weirdly one-dimensional portrayal. Despite that, his work is a creative and interesting addition to the poetry pantheon, and worth taking a look at.
March 15, 2025
In reading through Amichai's prodigious body of poems, it becomes clear he buttressed a soaring new vernacular for the modern Jewish poetic tradition. His kaleidoscopic allusions to his parents and young lovers, Torah, Passover and Yom Kippur, Job and Esther, David and Jonathan, Jerusalem and Israel, war and the waiting, and the eternal inner dialogue between God and humanity develop fuller resonance with each successive poem and poem section. This collection serves as a fitting testament to the 20th century's prophet of Hebrew poetry and Jewish expression.
June 16, 2018
For me, Amichai's strongest poems are those that focus on and explore a single metaphor. "Jacob and the Angel" and "Air Hostess" do this very well. While this collection is exhaustive in covering Amichai over the years, that same comprehensiveness also shows how often the poet covers the same topics with the same language over and over again. Or, conversely, how quickly he switches metaphors from one line to the next leaving this reader dizzy or left behind altogether.
October 7, 2018
"The three languages I know,
All the colors in which I see and dream:
None will help me."
- from “Like Our Bodies’ Imprint“
"And like a dark branch that is white
where it is broken,
I too am bright in my love."
- from “Street“
"Sometimes pus,
sometimes poetry —
always something is excreted,
always pain."
- from “Ibn Gabirol”
"The two of them together and each of them alone."
All the colors in which I see and dream:
None will help me."
- from “Like Our Bodies’ Imprint“
"And like a dark branch that is white
where it is broken,
I too am bright in my love."
- from “Street“
"Sometimes pus,
sometimes poetry —
always something is excreted,
always pain."
- from “Ibn Gabirol”
"The two of them together and each of them alone."
December 15, 2019
Something I saw recently brought to mind a Yehuda Amichai poem, so I’ve been reading his collected and my soul feels better now that this book is among my possessions. “The Place Where We Are Right” (from 1963) could have been written this week, and so many of the poems, even these shorter ones, feel similarly enduring.
October 4, 2021
I expected lots of amazing, hope-filles poems, but instead found the author to be a man clinging to life and love instead of his faith. He seems to have lost that over the years. I should have done more research about the author before reading the collection. But it was interesting to see the soul of a man unfold in front of you through his poems. Interesting read.
July 23, 2018
The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai is vivid and bold, delicately tender, often ironic, sometimes forbidden, but always inspiring and original. This compilation is one of the most moving collections of poetry I have had the pleasure of reading.
Read
August 5, 2020DNF on page 67.
If it was the length of most poetry collections I read, I probably would have finished it and rated it 3 stars.
But this collection is 526 pages long!
I don't have the energy to invest that much time in something I'm feeling average about.
If it was the length of most poetry collections I read, I probably would have finished it and rated it 3 stars.
But this collection is 526 pages long!
I don't have the energy to invest that much time in something I'm feeling average about.
September 5, 2022
A beautiful collection. Amachai’s use of language, paired with his understanding of culture and religion, works together to make some truly beautiful poetry. I can only imagine how much more impactful his work is in its original language.
July 22, 2025
Four and a half stars.
There are some excellent poems here. His love poetry is probably his main strength. Any weaker poems are mostly from his earlier books before he had completely found his voice.
There are some excellent poems here. His love poetry is probably his main strength. Any weaker poems are mostly from his earlier books before he had completely found his voice.
November 21, 2019
Achingly brilliant
February 17, 2020
Brilliant, especially the affectionate love poems. In addition, his poems echo a profound national Tradition.
May 18, 2020
"Like a newspaper pinned to a fence by the wind, so my soul is stuck to me." - Yehuda Amichai
September 28, 2020
Tender, visionary, helps me weep and rejoice.
February 13, 2023
Of the books/translations included in here, Open Closed Open (1998, tr. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld) was my favorite.
February 22, 2024
colonizer poetry is bad poetry, sorry not sorry.
December 31, 2016
Amichai died in 2000. His first collection of poems appeared in Israel in 1955 and by 1965 he was recognized not just as a major Israeli poet but one of the great poets of contemporary world literature. This edition brings together the most complete edition of his poetry available in English, edited by Robert Alter, who selected translations from among previous published editions or, when none were satisfactorily available, commissioned translations from among the best living translators of Amichai’s work. Among the translators, in addition to Alter, are Chana Bloch, Chana Kronfeld, Ted Hughes, Steven Mitchell, Leon Wieseltier, Glenda Abramson, Harold Schimmel, and the author himself.
As a retrospective it is beyond impressive and only reminds us that Amichai’s greatness wasn’t just global but timeless. The first poems in this collection talk about his childhood and first experiences in the military, including the War for Independence in 1948, and the last poems are about mortality and his children’s military service. “Even my loves,” he writes, “are measured by wars.” In between the poems about love and war are poems about peace, God and faith, sex and marriage, memory and history, and of life and death. I can’t speak to the innovations in use of vernacular Hebrew that Amichai is credited with but I do know even in translation the poems sing. His language is the music of joy, fear, sorrow, regret, dispute, love, remorse, outrage, doubt, certainty, worry, and it comes in clear statements and deft understatement, and with wry, incisive humor. First, some lines that might take your breath away and give you a sense of Amichai’s genius:
This is a whole poem:
Watch in the following how he uses the simple punctuation of a colon to great effect:
And in these lines the beauty of observation:
I have three index cards filled on both sides with scribbled lines with page numbers and then there are just lines of page numbers where whole poems are denoted: “6, 7, 9, 12-13, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 58-59….” There are so many poems of excellence, profound and moving. This is a collection that resists shelving. You reach to put it up and open it and scan, then read, and then move from the bookcase and find a chair. And there you sit and read and wonder and are moved. Here is a poem whole, from a sequence called “Summer and the Far End of Prophecy,” that my eye fell on as I was intending to close the book:
As a retrospective it is beyond impressive and only reminds us that Amichai’s greatness wasn’t just global but timeless. The first poems in this collection talk about his childhood and first experiences in the military, including the War for Independence in 1948, and the last poems are about mortality and his children’s military service. “Even my loves,” he writes, “are measured by wars.” In between the poems about love and war are poems about peace, God and faith, sex and marriage, memory and history, and of life and death. I can’t speak to the innovations in use of vernacular Hebrew that Amichai is credited with but I do know even in translation the poems sing. His language is the music of joy, fear, sorrow, regret, dispute, love, remorse, outrage, doubt, certainty, worry, and it comes in clear statements and deft understatement, and with wry, incisive humor. First, some lines that might take your breath away and give you a sense of Amichai’s genius:
“An achievement, a retreat. Night reminds
And day forgets.”
“From there the other roads began.
And my heart was covered with dreams, like
my shiny shoes that were covered with dust,
for dreams, too, are a long road
with an end I will not reach.”
This is a whole poem:
“God’s fate now
is like the fate
of trees and stones, sun and moon,
when people stopped believing in them
and began to believe in Him.
But He has to stay with us: at least like the trees, like the stones
and like the sun and the moon and the stars.”
Watch in the following how he uses the simple punctuation of a colon to great effect:
“My hands are stretched out to a past not mine
and to a future not mine: it is hard to love,
hard to embrace, with hands like that.”
“A woman said to me once:
‘Everyone goes to his own funeral.’ I didn’t understand then.
I don’t understand now, but
I go.”
“(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never fails.)”
“And I do now what any memory dog does:
I howl quietly
and piss a boundary of remembrance around me
so no one can enter.”
“I went down to the harbor, thinking: I’m a lucky man—
I will never have to sail again.”
And in these lines the beauty of observation:
“And now it’s too soon for archaeology
and too late to fix what was done.”
“The landscape is calmed like a baby
through sobbing,
I recited the prayer of forgetting.”
“Searching for a goat or a son
has always been the beginning
of a new religion in these mountains.”
“And the land is divided into regions of memory and districts of hope, and its people are all mixed together,
like those returning from a wedding and from a funeral.”
“Prophecy, too, is archaeology.”
“From a man who loses things
I’ve turned into a lost man.
I am tired of doors,
I want windows, only windows.”
“At night I walked again along the row of weeping willows
whose branches reach down. I sat on the same bench
where I waited many years ago, when I was a little boy.
Two generations of remembering have passed,
now the first generation of forgetting has come.”
I have three index cards filled on both sides with scribbled lines with page numbers and then there are just lines of page numbers where whole poems are denoted: “6, 7, 9, 12-13, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 58-59….” There are so many poems of excellence, profound and moving. This is a collection that resists shelving. You reach to put it up and open it and scan, then read, and then move from the bookcase and find a chair. And there you sit and read and wonder and are moved. Here is a poem whole, from a sequence called “Summer and the Far End of Prophecy,” that my eye fell on as I was intending to close the book:
Oh, the calendar’s blank prophecy on the first of the year.
Oh, the memory of beach chairs folded and stacked
in winter, shackled together with an iron chain
like galley slaves in ancient days. Slaves of memory.
Swimmers’ strokes preserve the memory of swimming
and of last summer too, of all the summers that were,
swimmers’ strokes proceed from love
and unto love they shall return. Oh, the great prophecy
of what is past or what is yet to come.
And there, at the far end of prophecy,
a swimsuit spread out to dry.
December 14, 2019
4.5
This is a really, really extensive collection. I didn't connect much with Yehuda's poetry until I got to the text from Time (1978) and A Great Tranquility : Questions and Answers (1980). At the end of it, and in revisiting these poems, I've become an Amichai fan. I think it would be best to stay patient with the collection, in case you don't connect right away.
From Man You Are and to Man You Shall Return (1985), the selections begin with poems about Mother's Death. So poignant.
The second half basically probes a man's existence through the lens of spirituality. I read some verses without fully understanding the references from Bible or other Jewish Terms.
The last segment Open Closed Open (1998) p. 408 onwards, had me drop out of this book. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with the text but maybe because I'd read enough long verses already. And the even longer verses (about love, nurturing, parents etc) in this part has references of Bible that I don't grasp. Among these, you find a line or so, that makes you go "Wow." Parent's Lodging Place is a good one from this collection. The text also indicates how his poetry has evolved spiritually.
Apart from this, the major chunk of his poetry is his dedication and love of Jerusalem.
His poetry talks a lot about God, Truth, Beauty, Parting, Hope, Change. The translations are wonderfully done.
"Ballad on the Changing Room" P.289 and "Air Hostess" "Inside The Apple" blew me away.
On Parting, this one will stay with me.
"We Traveled to a Sleep Far from Us" (excerpt)
Other Favorites:
The Two of Us Together And Each Of Us Alone p.5
God Takes Pity on Kindergarten Children p.6
Ibn Gabirol p.15
From All the Spaces Between Times p.17
And That Is Your Glory p.28
The Right Angle p.50
Steer p.63
Like Our Bodies' Imprint p.70
If With a Bitter Mouth p.71
And Let Us Not Get Excited p.77
My Child Has The Fragrance of Peace p.90
Bitter and Brusque p.94
God's Fate p.98
A Pity We Were Such a Good Invention, p.104
We Did It p.107
To Break Up Now p. 149
We Lay Exposed and Equal p.188
Not for the Sake of Remembering p. 189
Akhziv 197-200
Love Song p.216
I Am Tired p.217
When A Man Is Left p. 219
From Time p.15, 17, 46, 48, 62, 71, 80
The Doors Are Closed p.273
Rain In A Foreign Land p.277
Air Hostess p.278
I Don't Know If History Returns p.279
A Woman Like That p.287
Song of Love and Pain p.292
Peace of Mind, Peace and Mind p 296
We Traveled to a Sleep From Us p.300
Infinite Poem p.303
On Some Other Planer You May Be Right p.309
Everybody Needs An Abandoned Garden In His Life p.312
Herbal Tea. P.316
Those Were Days of Grace p.318
Try to Remember Some Details p.319
A Man in his Life p.324
Hamadiya p.335
Inside the Apple p.352
But We p.375
Sixty Kilos of Pure Love p.376
Sorrow and Joy p.378
Between p.379
I Am A Penniless Prophet p.384
Summer Rest and Words p.386-387
Departure from a place where you had no love
includes the pain of all that did not happen
together with the longing for what will happen after you leave.
This is a really, really extensive collection. I didn't connect much with Yehuda's poetry until I got to the text from Time (1978) and A Great Tranquility : Questions and Answers (1980). At the end of it, and in revisiting these poems, I've become an Amichai fan. I think it would be best to stay patient with the collection, in case you don't connect right away.
From Man You Are and to Man You Shall Return (1985), the selections begin with poems about Mother's Death. So poignant.
The second half basically probes a man's existence through the lens of spirituality. I read some verses without fully understanding the references from Bible or other Jewish Terms.
The last segment Open Closed Open (1998) p. 408 onwards, had me drop out of this book. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with the text but maybe because I'd read enough long verses already. And the even longer verses (about love, nurturing, parents etc) in this part has references of Bible that I don't grasp. Among these, you find a line or so, that makes you go "Wow." Parent's Lodging Place is a good one from this collection. The text also indicates how his poetry has evolved spiritually.
Apart from this, the major chunk of his poetry is his dedication and love of Jerusalem.
His poetry talks a lot about God, Truth, Beauty, Parting, Hope, Change. The translations are wonderfully done.
"Ballad on the Changing Room" P.289 and "Air Hostess" "Inside The Apple" blew me away.
On Parting, this one will stay with me.
"We Traveled to a Sleep Far from Us" (excerpt)
We were close to each other like two
similar languages, Hebrew and Arabic,
English and German.
It was good for us together. But your heart studied
in a different school from your head.
Our meeting was an illusion of red bliss
like the meeting of sun and sea at evening."
***********************
"Look, just as time isn't inside clock
love isn't inside bodies :
bodies only tell the love."
***********************
Your heart plays blood-catch
inside your veins.
Your eyes are still warm, like beds
time has slept in.
Your thighs are two sweet yesterdays,
I'm coming to you.
All hundred and fifty Psalms
roar Hallelujah. P.13
**************************
Half the people love,
half the people hate.
And where is my place between such well-matched halves,
and through what crack will I see [...] P.32
Other Favorites:
The Two of Us Together And Each Of Us Alone p.5
God Takes Pity on Kindergarten Children p.6
Ibn Gabirol p.15
From All the Spaces Between Times p.17
And That Is Your Glory p.28
The Right Angle p.50
Steer p.63
Like Our Bodies' Imprint p.70
If With a Bitter Mouth p.71
And Let Us Not Get Excited p.77
My Child Has The Fragrance of Peace p.90
Bitter and Brusque p.94
God's Fate p.98
A Pity We Were Such a Good Invention, p.104
We Did It p.107
To Break Up Now p. 149
We Lay Exposed and Equal p.188
Not for the Sake of Remembering p. 189
Akhziv 197-200
Love Song p.216
I Am Tired p.217
When A Man Is Left p. 219
From Time p.15, 17, 46, 48, 62, 71, 80
The Doors Are Closed p.273
Rain In A Foreign Land p.277
Air Hostess p.278
I Don't Know If History Returns p.279
A Woman Like That p.287
Song of Love and Pain p.292
Peace of Mind, Peace and Mind p 296
We Traveled to a Sleep From Us p.300
Infinite Poem p.303
On Some Other Planer You May Be Right p.309
Everybody Needs An Abandoned Garden In His Life p.312
Herbal Tea. P.316
Those Were Days of Grace p.318
Try to Remember Some Details p.319
A Man in his Life p.324
Hamadiya p.335
Inside the Apple p.352
But We p.375
Sixty Kilos of Pure Love p.376
Sorrow and Joy p.378
Between p.379
I Am A Penniless Prophet p.384
Summer Rest and Words p.386-387
October 20, 2018
Like others whose reviews follow, having just finished reading this edition I find my heart and head and memories and understandings changed. Reading these poems Amichai has joined the short list of my favourite poets of all time. I have been so challenged, so delighted and saddened, so moved by the profound beauty of his poetry and only wish I were able to read it in the original Hebrew.
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