Synopses & Reviews
Amichai writes of the language of love, and tea with roasted almonds, of desire and love. Of a Jewish cemetery whose groundskeeper is an expert on flowers and seasons of the year, but no expert on buried Jews; of Russian shirts embroidered in the colors of love and death; of Jerusalem, the city where everything sails: the flags, the prayer shawls, the caftans, the monks' robes, the kaffiyehs, and young women's dresses. The poet tenderly, mischievously, breaks open the grand diction of the revered Jewish verses and supplications and suddenly discovers the light that his own experience casts upon them. Here, the bread of memory and the circuses of forgetting, nostalgia for God and a better world, dust and heat, and tamarisk trees that stand as flight attendants for the next millennium, saying, "You can still get a seat on the third millennium before liftoff." Open Closed Open-poems at once meditative and playful, anxious and full of hope, sung in a language of biblical directness and meaning, that through the microcosm of the everyday give us the gift of the world at large.
Review
“He is one of our great poets . . . once one has heard his quiet, even tones, precise, distanced and passionate, one never forgets them."-The Times Literary Supplement “Open Closed Open is the uncanny record of genuine inspiration. Happy is the man who has so much in his soul."-Leon Wieseltier “Poets have always talked reverently about unlocking the human heart, but when “I read Amichai I wonder who before him actually managed it."-Ted Hughes
Synopsis
In poems marked by tenderness and mischief, humanity and humor, Yehuda Amichai breaks open the grand diction of revered Jewish verses and casts the light of his own experience upon them. Here he tells of history, a nation, the self, love, and resurrection. Amichais last volume is one of meditation and hope, and stands as a testament to one of Israels greatest poets.
Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open
in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed
within us. And when we die, everything is open again.
Open closed open. Thats all we are.
from I WASNT ONE OF THE SIX MILLION:
AND WHAT IS MY LIFE SPAN? OPEN CLOSED OPEN”
About the Author
YEHUDA AMICHAI (1924-2000) has long been considered one of the great poets of the twentieth century. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Israel Prize, his country's highest honor. His work has been translated into more than thirty-seven languages. Winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
The Amen Stone
I Wasnt One of the Six Million:
And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open
I Foretell the Days of Yore
The Bible and You, the Bible and You, and Other Midrashim
Once I Wrote Now and in Other Days:
Thus Glory Passes, Thus Pass the Psalms
Gods Change, Prayers Are Here to Stay
David, King of Israel, Is Alive: Thou Art the Man
My Parents Lodging Place
What Has Always Been
Israeli Travel: Otherness Is All, Otherness Is Love
Evening Promenade on Valley of the Ghosts Street
Summer and the Far End of Prophecy
Houses (Plural); Love (Singular)
The Language of Love and Tea with Roasted Almonds
The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy:
The Touch of Longing Is Everywhere
In My Life, on My Life
Jewish Travel: Change Is God and Death Is His Prophet
Names, Names, in Other Days and in Our Time
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Why Jerusalem?
Conferences, Conferences: Malignant Words, Benign Speech
My Son Was Drafted
Autumn, Love, Commercials
And Who Will Remember the Rememberers?
The Jewish Time Bomb
Notes
Acknowledgments