The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

Starred review from November 16, 2015
Over his long career, Amichai (1924–2000) became the best-known poet of modern Israel and was admired in translation around the world. This mammoth and ably assembled selection combines existing English versions (by Chana Bloch, Stephen Mitchell, Ted Hughes, and others) with new ones by Alter. The book follows Amichai from early adulthood and the founding of Israel, through residences in Jerusalem and on the Mediterranean, through hot war and cold peace, and into old age. As Alter, a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California–Berkeley, explains in his compact preface, Amichai’s Hebrew survives translation well even though it is saturated in Biblical and Jewish liturgical cadence. Amichai wrote prolifically, in love and sorrow, about the land and the struggles over it. Yet it may be as a poet of embodied erotic desire that Amichai has had the widest appeal. His love poems will go on being read and studied, cherished and sent as billet-doux. And this casual, open, yet very literary poet seems to have anticipated his fate: “I who lose things describe in passionate words what I love,” Amichai recalled. “I whose house will be razed and whose body will rot/ praise the new houses/ and the bodies still fresh and filled with love.” Agent: Deborah Harris Agency.

Starred review from November 1, 2015
Amichai (19242000) arrived in Israel in 1937 and wrote in Hebrew. He saw action on the front line during the Israeli War of Independence of 194849 and again in 1956, but he is no war poet. Editor Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Berkeley, translates many of the poems and provides a succinct introduction and notes. In this selection, poems from all Amichai's books are represented, including the entirety of his final collection, Open Closed Open (2000). As Alter points out, and it quickly becomes clear, Amichai is accessible in translation; indeed, the work of all 15 translators is uniformly high. His work also deserves to be called universal. As is always the case with great poets, Amichai describes his own environment in his own terms, yet we find in his perceptions our world. His concerns are our concerns made clear and intelligible, and his feelings are our feelings more deeply felt. They Fooled Us ends, unspilled blood / cries out louder than blood / that's spilled. We hear the biblical echo and know the literal truth of the statement. This is an indispensable collection, packed with unforgettable poems.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)