Author(s): Yehuda Amichai

Poetry

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 with universal resonance. His are among the most moving love poems written in any language in the past two generations--some exuberant, some powerfully erotic, many suffused with sadness over the fate of separation that casts its shadow across love. In a country torn by armed conflict, these poems poignantly assert the preciousness of private experience cherished under the repeated threat of violence and death. Amichai's poetry has attracted a variety of gifted translators on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the present. Assembled by the award-winning literary 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 alongside Alter's expert renderings, this edition offers both untranslated poems published for the first time and new, authoritative versions of Amichai's finest works. With this collection, a vital poetic voice is now available to English readers as it never has been before.