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Israeli Poetry: A Contemporary Anthology (Jewish Literature & Culture
The best of contemporary Israeli poetry is presented here in exciting new English translations. Poets included in the anthology are Amir Gilboa, Abba Kovner, Haim Gouri, Yehuda Amichai, Dan Pagis, Natan Zach, David Avidan, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Ory Bernstein, Meir Wieseltier, and Yona Wallach.
274 pages, Paperback
Published September 22, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 17, 2018
I have a habit of reading at least one book from each country that I visit. Israel’s literature is very rich, so I have read many books from Israeli writers. Now, back to Israel: A contemporary anthology. I am very happy I run across this book. It covers 11 poets from approx. 1940 to 1980, among them the famous Yehuda Amichai. As described in the introduction, not all the great poets were included, only some of them so the reader could get to know better the style and personality of each. A brief introduction is provided for each of the poets in the volume. As Bargad & Chyet handpicked the poets and poems that translation could do justice to them, I find the anthology overall impressive. I keep going back to it time and time again. The poems cover a broad array of topics such love, longing, poetry, war, nature.
Below three of my favorite poems. Of course a subjective, biased selection; just a teaser really. Couldn’t recommend more reading the book.
Sinking Rising (Dahlia Ravikovitch)
Now the moon is
Shrinking sinking
Wan and low,
Lost and slow.
And even so
Maybe rainclouds swell its belly,
It seems larger.
A thin veil drifts over the sky.
The moon is shrinking sinking,
Coming apart,
Falling down.
These filmy clouds
Have rotted it away.
But wait a moment,
Behind it
A pale disc is rising,
A crescent moon
Which crossed the sky before it
Is on the rise.
Plain as a seed in the web of sky,
Thick as ripened pumpkin.
It’s the sinking moon
It’s the falling moon,
Darling come look at it.
It always comes back.
Quick and bitter (Yehuda Amichai)
The end was quick and bitter.
But the time between us was slow and sweet,
slow and sweet were the nights my hands
did not touch each other in despair but,
in the love, touched body which came between them.
And when I came into you, it was
the only time joy could be measured so
precisely by sharp pain. Quick and bitter.
Slow and sweet were the nights
but our now is bitter. It grates like sand—
'Let's be sensible' and such other curses.
And the farther we stray from loving
the more talking we have to do:
words, words and long, ordered phrases.
Had we stayed together
we could have become the quiet.
Memories of her friend who died (Ory Bernstein)
When he first came to see me I forgot that he was dead:
He wore familiar clothes and smiled a lot.
And I hadn’t touched a man since he died for dear of limbs falling off
Because he’d been buried with no coffin and quickly decomposed.
And when he came he sat still, preoccupied with something
Unknown and provoking, just as he liked
To play with his voice, the style of his hair, with my body,
Only his forehead kept twitching for no reason,
Like someone looking into the distance, the sun striking his eyes.
And I went to him and told him things that he knew,
A story I’d tried to tell him before, memories,
Silliness we’d seen together. And he didn’t answer.
Outside rose the strong earth smells
And I knew: He’d always
Return in this sort of rain and what would I tell him next time or next
Year of years,
If not the very things that today, that again, and again and again.
Below three of my favorite poems. Of course a subjective, biased selection; just a teaser really. Couldn’t recommend more reading the book.
Sinking Rising (Dahlia Ravikovitch)
Now the moon is
Shrinking sinking
Wan and low,
Lost and slow.
And even so
Maybe rainclouds swell its belly,
It seems larger.
A thin veil drifts over the sky.
The moon is shrinking sinking,
Coming apart,
Falling down.
These filmy clouds
Have rotted it away.
But wait a moment,
Behind it
A pale disc is rising,
A crescent moon
Which crossed the sky before it
Is on the rise.
Plain as a seed in the web of sky,
Thick as ripened pumpkin.
It’s the sinking moon
It’s the falling moon,
Darling come look at it.
It always comes back.
Quick and bitter (Yehuda Amichai)
The end was quick and bitter.
But the time between us was slow and sweet,
slow and sweet were the nights my hands
did not touch each other in despair but,
in the love, touched body which came between them.
And when I came into you, it was
the only time joy could be measured so
precisely by sharp pain. Quick and bitter.
Slow and sweet were the nights
but our now is bitter. It grates like sand—
'Let's be sensible' and such other curses.
And the farther we stray from loving
the more talking we have to do:
words, words and long, ordered phrases.
Had we stayed together
we could have become the quiet.
Memories of her friend who died (Ory Bernstein)
When he first came to see me I forgot that he was dead:
He wore familiar clothes and smiled a lot.
And I hadn’t touched a man since he died for dear of limbs falling off
Because he’d been buried with no coffin and quickly decomposed.
And when he came he sat still, preoccupied with something
Unknown and provoking, just as he liked
To play with his voice, the style of his hair, with my body,
Only his forehead kept twitching for no reason,
Like someone looking into the distance, the sun striking his eyes.
And I went to him and told him things that he knew,
A story I’d tried to tell him before, memories,
Silliness we’d seen together. And he didn’t answer.
Outside rose the strong earth smells
And I knew: He’d always
Return in this sort of rain and what would I tell him next time or next
Year of years,
If not the very things that today, that again, and again and again.
May 3, 2020
I have mixed feelings about this book. It is a collection of 11 Israeli poets, and each one is introduced in two or three pages. Those introductions are insightful and help the reader to better comprehend the poets' motivations and styles, but for me, it was more of an academic study with little entertainment value. A few poems did stand out to me, and there were lines here and there that were powerful, but I can't help but think that translated poetry cannot compare with the original Hebrew (in this case, but also in general, whatever the original language is).
My favorites here were Amir Gilboa and Yehuda Amichai and anything about the Holocaust and wars like the Six-Day or Yom Kippur. These evoke real feeling, raw emotion. On the other hand, the poets who were reinventing poetry in the 1970s and '80s were interesting to study with their revolutionary styles (with which I happen to identify in my own poetry), but they felt more like they were so fixated on breaking free that they lost the emotion of their predecessors. And so as a poet, it was something to study for me, but I struggled to get through it. It took me over a month to finish, and now I'm starving for a quick, entertaining novel to read!
My favorites here were Amir Gilboa and Yehuda Amichai and anything about the Holocaust and wars like the Six-Day or Yom Kippur. These evoke real feeling, raw emotion. On the other hand, the poets who were reinventing poetry in the 1970s and '80s were interesting to study with their revolutionary styles (with which I happen to identify in my own poetry), but they felt more like they were so fixated on breaking free that they lost the emotion of their predecessors. And so as a poet, it was something to study for me, but I struggled to get through it. It took me over a month to finish, and now I'm starving for a quick, entertaining novel to read!
November 19, 2018
An anthology of the poetry of an entire country and only two women represented. No thanks.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews