Author(s): Peter Cole

Spirituality

This groundbreaking collection presents for the first time in English a substantial body of poetry from the world of Jewish mysticism. Taking up Gershom Scholem's call to plumb the "tremendous poetic potential concealed" in the Kabbalistic tradition, MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole provides dazzling English renderings of works composed on three continents over a period of some fifteen hundred years. The volume presents the texts in their original languages alongside the English translations. These prayerful poems represent different cultural terrains and take up multiple tacks. The reader will encounter cosmological masterpieces and occasional poems; erotic charms and epic phantasmagoria; ballad-like lyrics and didactic mottoes; simple hymns of pure devotion and gnomic verse of numerical intrigue. Cole supplies an insightful introduction along with commentaries on the poems, and in an elegant afterword Aminadav Dykman places Kabbalistic verse in the context of world literature.