With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry (Excelsior Editions) (Paperback)

~ Tal Nitzan (Editor), Rachel Tzvia Back (Editor)
Key Phrases: iron pen, will you possess, fruit dies, Rachel Tzvia Back, Person's Home, Will You Possess It All (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

...a significant collection of protest poetry ... This collection presents poetry as prophecy, in the sense of giving voice to counter-cultural ideas and crying out against injustice ... the tone of the poems vary, but they work together as a whole, calling attention to questions, pain, and injustice. --Jewish Book World

...confronts profound literary questions for political poetry ... With an Iron Pen is replete with powerful works by Israel s finest poets. --Tikkun

Product Description

A groundbreaking collection of forty-two Israeli poetic voices protesting the occupation of the West Bank.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr (March 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1438426488
• ISBN-13: 978-1438426488
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #459,008 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and heartwrending, August 13, 2009

By	B. A. Murane (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This collection is as beautiful as it is heartwrending. A view into a side of Israeli conscience often overlooked, these poems from both major poets and everyday folk show us that, despite the threats of terrorism, Israelis feel remorse and think deeply about the impacts of their country's responses to the conflict. Some would prefer to maintain the one-dimensional portrayal of Israelis as proud victors in the Israeli-Arab conflict, or helpless victims of it. This book reveals Israelis who are uncomfortable, discontent, or righteously enraged with those portrayals.

Some poems are openly critical of Israeli counter-terrorism brutality, others of the limp peace movement. Some are hopeful, some are utterly depressed. The book is a sample of the variety of voices that are part and parcel of Israel grappling with its own consequences. This book is not for advocacy purposes; it's about conscience.

The footnotes in the back also helpfully highlight where poets used Biblical phrases, explains news events referenced in the poems, and explains the puns used in original Hebrew. Reading the book through again with the added context makes it twice as resonant.

I highly, highly recommend this to anyone seeking to understand the many dimensions of Israeli society and conscience.

5.0 out of 5 stars SINGING A NEW SONG--OF PROTEST, September 27, 2009

By	Alicia Ostriker "Alicia Ostriker, poet" (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

With an Iron Pen is important for American readers to read for two reasons. One is that the poetry is so powerful simply as poetry. There is work here by some of Israel's greatest poets, including Yehuda Amichai, Maya Bejerano, Ramy Ditzanny, Moshe Dor, Dahlia Ravikovich, Meir Wieseltier and Natan Zach. The translations, by nearly a dozen excellent translators, capture the way Israeli poetry in our time blends biblical and liturgical references--references every Israeli whether religious or secular would understand--with the most acute modernity. Dahlia Ravikovich, for instance, ironically begins a poem whose title quotes Psalm 137, "Our Captors Required of us a Song," "Sing for us from the songs of Zion/ which will ascend to a deaf ear." She goes on, "Hasten and sing for us a new song--/we'll pull the song from your throats with pliers..../ For what are we without your agony?/A broken vessel. The hatred in your throats is also a broken vessel." Notice how the "we" and the "you" in this poem remain ambiguous, forcing the reader to question and wonder? This is the kind of work only poetry can do. But poetry can also do the work of compassion. Listing the contents of a Palestinian home which is just about to be demolished, Yoram Levy Porat quotes Psalm 42:

Pots, pans,
Chimney of galvanized tin,
Blakets, pillows, old bedspread,
An embroidered silk bird
Panteth after the water brooks.

The other reason Americans need this book is that we need to recognize the sorrow, anger, bitterness and despair, the hope and the hopelessness, felt by Israelis of conscience, who love their country just as we love ours, and yearn to save its soul just as we who struggle against our own country's policies yearn. We take it for granted that poets wrote in opposition to the Vietnam War, and write now in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--because they are unwinnable and because they are unjust. The Israeli poets in this book feel the same about the Occupation.

5.0 out of 5 stars outstanding literary representations of Israeli conscience, September 10, 2009

By	Edward (Florida) - See all my reviews

There are wonderful works here, a testimony to the power of Israeli artists to engage with their society's sins of occupation and loss of authentic Zionist values. One of the readers on this site is highly negative and demagogue-like, demanding "Who will read it then except of course those who wish to hate and condemn Israel?" The answer of course--anyone who cares for the people of Israel and Palestine and who mourns the terrible human toll that occupation and needless wars have taken on both peoples.