Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers [Paperback]

Yehuda Amichai (Author), Glenda Abramson (Translator), Tudor Parfitt (Translator), Glenda Glenda Abramson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1878818686 | ISBN-13: 978-1878818683 | Publication Date: December 1, 1997 | Edition: Trans. from the Hebrew

poetry, tr Glenda Abramson & Tudor Parfitt

Editorial Reviews

Review

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 considerable: 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

Review

"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" (Stephen Berg )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 86 pages
• Publisher: Sheep Meadow; Trans. from the Hebrew edition (December 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878818686
• ISBN-13: 978-1878818683
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,963,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Middle Eastern > Hebrew

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A warrior poet unbound, January 18, 2000

By 

L. Shneyder "Dj BaLou" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers (Paperback)

Yehuda Amichai is quite probably one of the last warrior poets. He is a veteran of three wars and has tasted the bitter fruit of human suffering and the loss of love. His knack for expounding both lament and spiritual awareness through his knowledge of the Tanakh are by all means, impressive. This book is a good introduction to some of his very straight forward and powerful work. His poems on war are meditations in remembering, litany's for a time gone by and not to be forgotten. Amichai fondles the human heart flwalessly, he coaxes it open with his soft words, there is nothing brash about his verse, it is gentle, like the soldier who picks up a refuge child in the field, softly so as not to impart the violence in his hands to the child now entering his embrace. A must read for any lover of poetry

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A warrior poet unbound, January 18, 2000

By 

L. Shneyder "Dj BaLou" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers (Paperback)

Yehuda Amichai is quite probably one of the last warrior poets. He is a veteran of three wars and has tasted the bitter fruit of human suffering and the loss of love. His knack for expounding both lament and spiritual awareness through his knowledge of the Tanakh are by all means, impressive. This book is a good introduction to some of his very straight forward and powerful work. His poems on war are meditations in remembering, litany's for a time gone by and not to be forgotten. Amichai fondles the human heart flwalessly, he coaxes it open with his soft words, there is nothing brash about his verse, it is gentle, like the soldier who picks up a refuge child in the field, softly so as not to impart the violence in his hands to the child now entering his embrace. A must read for any lover of poetry

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishingly great poetry, May 22, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers (Paperback)

I picked up this little volume and began to read. I know Amichai's work in Hebrew and wanted to see how much came over in English translation. I was astonished. The poems are also tremendously powerful and moving in translation.
He opens with a poem of commemoration to a comrade who was killed on the sands of Ashdod in Israel's War of Independence. He writes such a beautiful love poem to his wife Chana, a poem which subtlely remarks on the changing character of love with the years. He writes of meeting tourists in his holy city home Jerusalem, and how they looking for monuments do not see the real thing, the man, the poet with two - shopping bags in his hand on his way home from the market.
Amichai is a poet of war and a poet of love. He is a poet of clear colloquial language and the very deepest feeling.
Who reads this book will not only have tremendous pleasure, they will know the work of a truly great writer.