Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers

by Glenda Glenda Abramson

Poets have always talked reverently about unlocking the human heart, but when I read Amichai I wonder who before him actually managed it. This is the real biological substance-the most natural thing in the world, yet he makes it seem like a new thing in poetry... the undersong of a people. -- Ted Hughes Yehuda Amichai is by now one of the half-dozen leading poets in the world. He has found a voice that speaks across cultural boundaries and a vision so sure that he can make the conflicts of the citizen soldier in modern Israel stand for those of humankind. His wit is he can say virtually anything and give his words enough sting to defuse both sentimentality and hyperbole. -- Mark Rudman Yehuda Amichai's splendid poems, refined and cast in the desperate foundries of the Middle East, where life and faith are always at stake, exhibit a majestic and Biblical range of the topography of the soul.... He is a psalmist utterly modern, yet movingly traditional. -- Anthony Hecht “Amichai has entered that small accidental, permanent company of poets -- Hikmet, Milosz, Vallejo-who speak for each of us and all of us by redefining our nobility, by speaking to us in his voice of many selves. In a time of vile politics and lost gods, Amichai continues to struggle with both in the midst of everyday life.” (Stephen Berg) “Two phrases, as I read through Great Questions and Answers, occurs to me, both characterizing the book for "Consummate tenderness" and "Peace at last." The book is the man....The resignation we overhear in these poems, of consummate tenderness, of peace at last, is a triumph beyond loss and grief, towards an art moving and lovely to make one want to live it with the poet as a deep fulfillment of one's own.” (David Ignatow)

Genres: Poetry

79 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Flo]

Closed are the doors

Closed are the doors that were to be
open to me forever. And those I can open
guard vacant places
like ancient despolied graves.

I think about the love of people
who have forgotten
to take down decorations after the festival:
what do they have left?

Farewell to you too. The hour
we woke early to part
has stayed fixed in me, like an alarm clock
that needs to alarm no more, but just
clicks.

A good friend of mine loves Amichai's poetry. Now I can see why. Born in Germany in 1924, he knew war and loss from the beginning, until he died in Israel in 2000. His poetry—replete with allusions to daily life and the philosophical complexity they entail, brimming with keepsakes and possibilities, subtleties and directness—reflects his inner conflicts, the ambivalence towards the bittersweet nature of memory, the countless attempts to hold on to certain things in order to make some sense of the world.
This is not even one of Amichai's most popular poetry collections for some reason, but it packed quite a punch. I can't imagine the rest—I'm definitely going to keep exploring his work. If not great, something has to bring some tranquility, someday.


March 30, 19
* Later on my blog

[Edita]

Since then I battle against pain,
Since then I march against my memories
Like a man against the wind,
Since then I weep for my memories
Like a man for his dead,
Since then I put out my memories
Like a man, a fire.
Since then I am silent.
*
What are you doing here between the- promised and the
forgotten,
Between the hoped for and the imagined?
What are you doing here lying in wait for happiness
With your lovely face a tourist advertisement from God
And your soul rent and torn like mine?

She answered me: My soul is rent and torn like yours
But it is beautiful because of that
Like fine lace.
*
The words are still
in my memory,
But I've forgotten on which side of the door they were said,
Inside or out.

And from the one letter I wrote you
I only remember the taste
Of the stamp's bitter glue on my tongue.