Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry

by Tsipi Keller (translator), Aminadav Dykman (Introduction)

Poets on the Edge introduces four decades of Israel's most vigorous poetic voices. Selected and translated by author Tsipi Keller, the collection showcases a generous sampling of work from twenty-seven established and emerging poets, bringing many to readers of English for the first time. Thematically and stylistically innovative, the poems chart the evolution of new currents in Hebrew poetry that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and, in breaking from traditional structures of line, rhyme, and meter, have become as liberated as any contemporary American verse. Writing on politics, sexual identity, skepticism, intellectualism, community, country, love, fear, and death, these poets are daring, original, and direct, and their poems are matched by the freshness and precision of Keller's translations.

Genres: Poetry, Judaism, Jewish

384 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no part in the infinite
of light years and dark years but the darkness is mine
and the light is mine and my time is mine.

— Yehuda Amichai
*
Look, as we agreed,
I am in one place, you in another.
We didn’t become one, which is also natural,
and in your weakness and in mine
there looms a promise, too:
after memory forgetfulness is all.
[...]
And if now I’m alone and aching and ailing more than ever,
this, too, was a choice,
if not always conscious. And if you too are alone,
it makes my loneliness less just
and this should sustain you as well.


— Natan Zach
*
Toward evening
my wishes go naked

in paper canoes
sluggishly they drift
in lakes of murky moments

a wind moves upon the water
its white kisses
delivered one by one

and a great calm
descends upon the water

— Ruth Ramot