The Selected Poetry Of Yehuda Amichai
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) was Israel's most popular poet, as well as a literary figure of international reputation. In this collection, renowned translators Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell have selected Amichai's most beloved poems, including forty poems from his later work. A new foreword by C.K. Williams, written especially for this edition, addresses Amichai’s enduring legacy and sets his poetry in the context of the new millennium.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pieces of laundry hanging from Jerusalem's rooftops serve as signposts distinguishing Arabs from Jews; Amichai's brief lyric crystallizing their mutual hatred would heal the rift, if words could. Israel's best-known poet sifts centuries of Jewish experience in firsthand impressions of his troubled land; moreover, he makes the particular universal. In their remarkable translations, Bloch and Mitchell bring over the poet's healing, wise voice in a modern American idiom that nevertheless remains true to his biblical and cultural roots. Amichai circumscribes the world in a few lines; pain, joy, sorrow, hope press against the reader with the felt weight of experience. Love poems are shot through with an ironic awareness that love is no panacea. In their richness of history, their ever-present political dimension, their sharing of a common frame of reference with their audience, these poems are miles above almost anything in contemporary American verse.
