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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780374715151 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 11/03/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 576 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) is considered to be Israel’s greatest contemporary poet. With his poems available in forty languages, he may be the most widely translated Hebrew poet since King David. Amichai’s work published in English includes Songs of Jerusalem and Myself, Time, The Great Tranquillity, Amen, Open Closed Open, and Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers.
Robert Alter’s scholarly works on subjects ranging from the eighteenth-century novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned him the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times. Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) is considered to be Israel's greatest contemporary poet. Translated into forty languages, he may be the most widely translated Hebrew poet since King David. Amichai's work published in English includes Songs of Jerusalem and Myself, Time, The Great Tranquillity, Amen, Open Closed Open, and Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers. Robert Alter's achievements in scholarship ranging from the eighteenth-century novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned him the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times. Alter is the Class of 1937 Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read an Excerpt
The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
By Robert Alter
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2015 Hana AmichaiAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-71515-1
CHAPTER 1
Now and in other days 1955
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
When I Was a Child
When I was a child
grasses and masts stood at the seashore,
and as I lay there
I thought they were all the same
because all of them rose into the sky above me.
Only my mother's words went with me
like a sandwich wrapped in rustling waxpaper,
and I didn't know when my father would come back
because there was another forest beyond the clearing.
Everything stretched out a hand,
a bull gored the sun with its horns,
and in the nights the light of the streets caressed
my cheeks along with the walls,
and the moon, like a large pitcher, leaned over
and watered my thirsty sleep.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
My Mother Baked the Whole World for Me
My mother baked the whole world for me
In sweet cakes.
My beloved filled my window
With raisins of stars.
And my yearnings closed inside me
Like bubbles in a loaf of bread.
On the outside, I am smooth and quiet and brown.
The world loves me.
But my hair is sad as reeds in a drying swamp —
All the rare birds with beautiful plumage
Flee from me.
BENJAMIN AND BARBARA HARSHAV
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.
CHANA BLOCH AND CHANA KRONFELD
God Takes Pity on Kindergarten Children
God takes pity on kindergarten children.
Less on schoolchildren.
On grown-ups, He won't take pity anymore.
He leaves them alone.
Sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the blazing sand,
To get to the first-aid station
Dripping blood.
Maybe He will take pity and cast His shadow
On those who truly love
As a tree on someone sleeping on the bench
On a boulevard.
Maybe we too will spend on them
The last coins of favor
Mother bequeathed us,
So their bliss will protect us
Now and in other days.
BENJAMIN AND BARBARA HARSHAV
Autobiography in the Year 1952
My father built a great worry around me like a dock
Once I left it before I was finished
And he remained with his great, empty worry.
And my mother — like a tree on the shore
Between her arms outstretched for me.
And in '31 my hands were merry and small
And in '41 they learned to use a rifle
And when I loved my first love
My thoughts were like a bunch of colored balloons
And the girl's white hand clutched them all
With a thin string — and then let them fly.
And in '51, the movement of my life
Was like the movement of many slaves rowing a ship,
And the face of my father like the lantern at the end of a parting train,
And my mother closed all the clouds in her brown closet.
And I climbed up my street,
And the twentieth century was the blood in my veins,
Blood that wanted to go out to many wars,
Through many openings.
It pounds on my head from inside
And moves in angry waves to my heart.
But now, in the spring of '52, I see
More birds have returned than left last winter.
And I return down the slope of the mountain
To my room where the woman's body is heavy
And full of time.
BENJAMIN AND BARBARA HARSHAV
I Waited for My Girl and Her Steps Were Not There
I waited for my girl and her steps were not there.
But I heard a shot — soldiers
training for war.
Soldiers always train for some war.
Then I opened the collar of my shirt
and the two lapel edges pointed
in two directions.
And my neck rose between them —
on it the crest of my quiet head
bearing the fruit of eyes.
And below, in my warm pocket, the clinking keys
gave me the small sense of security
of those things that could still
be locked and kept.
But my girl yet walks through the streets
adorned in the jewels of the end-time
and the beads of the terrible danger
round her neck.
ROBERT ALTER
Two Poems About the First Battles
I
The first battles brought out
terrible flowers of love
with kisses nearly as lethal as mortar fire.
The lovely buses of our city
transport the boy-soldiers:
all of lines 12, 8, and 5 travel
to the front.
II
On the way to the front we slept in a kindergarten,
I placed a wooly teddy bear under my head,
tops and dolls and trumpets descended
onto my tired face —
not angels.
My feet, in their heavy boots,
knocked over a tower of brightly colored blocks
that were piled on each other,
each block smaller than the one beneath it.
And in my head was a chaos of memories large and small
and out of it they made dreams.
Beyond the window there were flames ...
and so, too, in my eyes under my eyelids.
LEON WIESELTIER
Rain Falls on the Faces of My Friends
In memory of Dicky
Rain falls on the faces of my friends;
on the faces of my living friends
who cover their heads with a blanket —
and on the faces of my dead friends
who cover no more.
ROBERT ALTER
The Smell of Gasoline in My Nose
The smell of gasoline in my nose,
In my palm I hold your soul that rose,
Like an etrog in a bowl of soft cotton —
My dead father did it every autumn.
The olive tree stopped wondering — it knows
There are seasons and it's time to go.
Wipe your face, my girl, stand by me for a while,
As in a family picture, show your smile.
I packed my shirt and my gloom,
I won't forget you, girl in my room,
My last window before the desert and the gore,
That has no windows and has a war.
Once you laughed, now there's silence in your eyes,
The beloved country never cries,
The wind will rustle in the rumpled bed —
When will we sleep again head to head?
In the earth, raw materials leave their mark,
Not extracted like us from silence and dark,
A jet makes peace in the sky for all,
For us, and all those who love in the fall.
BENJAMIN AND BARBARA HARSHAV
Six Poems for Tamar
1
The rain is speaking quietly,
you can sleep now.
Near my bed, the rustle of newspaper wings.
There are no other angels.
I'll wake up early and bribe the coming day
to be kind to us.
2
You had a laughter of grapes:
many round green laughs.
Your body is full of lizards.
All of them love the sun.
Flowers grew in the field, grass grew on my cheeks,
everything was possible.
3
You're always lying on
my eyes.
Every day of our life together
Ecclesiastes cancels a line of his book.
We are the saving evidence in the terrible trial.
We'll acquit them all!
4
Like the taste of blood in the mouth,
spring was upon us — suddenly.
The world is awake tonight.
It is lying on its back, with its eyes open.
The crescent moon fits the line of your cheek,
your breast fits the line of my cheek.
5
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.
6
My eyes want to flow into each other
like two neighboring lakes.
To tell each other
everything they've seen.
My blood has many relatives.
They never visit.
But when they die,
my blood will inherit.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
Yehuda Ha-Levi
The soft hairs on the back of his neck
are the roots of his eyes.
His curly hair is
the sequel to his dreams.
His forehead: a sail; his arms: oars
to carry the soul inside his body to Jerusalem.
But in the white fist of his brain
he holds the black seeds of his happy childhood.
When he reaches the belovèd, bone-dry land —
he will sow.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
Ibn Gabirol
Sometimes pus,
sometimes poetry —
always something is excreted,
always pain.
My father was a tree in a grove of fathers,
covered with green moss.
Oh widows of the flesh, orphans of the blood,
I've got to escape.
Eyes sharp as can-openers
pried open heavy secrets.
But through the wound in my chest
God peers into the universe.
I am the door
to his apartment.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
My Father
The memory of my father is wrapped in white paper
like slices of bread for the workday.
Like a magician pulling out rabbits and towers from his hat,
he pulled out from his little body — love.
The rivers of his hands
poured into his good deeds.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
From All the Spaces Between Times
From all the spaces between times,
from all the gaps in soldiers' ranks,
from cracks in the wall,
from doors we did not close tight,
from hands we did not hold,
from the distance between body and body
when we didn't come close to each other —
the great sprawling expanse adds up,
the plain, the desert,
where our souls will walk, hopeless, after death.
ROBERT ALTER
But Now See How Exaggerated
But now see how exaggerated parting is compared to meeting —
no longer twin sisters, no longer sisters,
no longer standing together,
just the petal of meeting, the butterfly of lingering,
against the sky of parting, and for the length of the journey without memory,
just the small warm air in the mouth of the beloved,
just the inside of the palm of a boy's hand
in the autumnal storms, between the high vaults of winter,
just the small brown eye
in this terrible, visible expanse.
See what the seasons do to the fields and the mountains,
what the wars do to the cities,
and what my words did not do to you,
and how my hands did not change the hue of your hair,
and the parting!
LEON WIESELTIER
Now That the Water Presses Hard
Now that the water presses hard
On the walls of the dam,
Now that the returning white storks
In the middle of the firmament
Turn into flocks of jet planes,
We will feel again how strong are the ribs,
How bold the warm air in the lungs,
How urgent the daring to love in the open plain,
When great dangers arch overhead,
And how much love is needed
To fill all the empty vessels
And the watches that stopped telling time,
And how much breath,
A blizzard of breath,
To sing the little Song of Spring.
BENJAMIN AND BARBARA HARSHAV
Two Hopes Away 1958
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
A Military Operation
A military operation changed the map.
Not your face. Not as the wind blows here.
For the world between the table and the chair
Remained all quiet, ours, and flat
Even post-Copernicus,
And the infinite sea begins just at the door,
And the faithful table laden as before,
Yesterday's talk and a scrap of hope between us.
Under the net of airline company routes
City planners set aside terrain
For lovers, bus stops, and destruction sites.
A new road paved. New distance comes to be.
But the border guards of possibility
Permitted us to enter their domain.
CHANA BLOCH AND CHANA KRONFELD
God's Hand in the World
1
God's hand is in the world
like my mother's hand in the guts of the slaughtered chicken
on Sabbath eve.
What does God see through the window
while his hands reach into the world?
What does my mother see?
2
My pain is already a grandfather:
it has begotten two generations
of pains that look like it.
My hopes have erected white housing projects
far away from the crowds inside me.
My girlfriend forgot her love on the sidewalk
like a bicycle. All night outside, in the dew.
Children mark the eras of my life
and the eras of Jerusalem
with moon chalk on the street.
God's hand in the world.
STEPHEN MITCHELL
A Corpse in the Field
His blood was flung hastily and carelessly
like the clothes
of someone much too tired.
How the night has grown!
The windows were right
like my parents, when I was a child.
Monastic winds
passed over the hills, serious, head bent.
Mayors, UN army officials
measured the distance from living
to dead,
with right angles and compasses and little rulers,
with cigar boxes, with hard emotions,
with sharpened hopes
and bloodhounds.
ROBERT ALTER
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai by Robert Alter. Copyright © 2015 Hana Amichai. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Translators,Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Introduction by Robert Alter,
NOW AND IN OTHER DAYS (1955),
TWO HOPES AWAY (1958),
POEMS, 1948–1962 (1963),
NOW IN THE UPROAR: POEMS, 1963–1968 (1968),
NOT FOR THE SAKE OF REMEMBERING (1971),
BEHIND ALL THIS A GREAT HAPPINESS IS HIDING (1976),
TIME (1978),
A GREAT TRANQUILLITY: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (1980),
THE HOUR OF GRACE (1983),
FROM MAN YOU ARE AND TO MAN YOU SHALL RETURN (1985),
THE FIST, TOO, WAS ONCE AN OPEN HAND AND FINGERS (1989),
OPEN CLOSED OPEN (1998),
Notes,
About the Translators,
Index of Titles and First Lines,
A Note About the Author,
Permissions Acknowledgments,
Copyright,