Customer Reviews

Poems from the Diwan (Poetica 32)

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I have read poetry of all ages and all languages for almost 75 years - all of the time since I learned to read as a very small, very young child. Apart of the illumination and pleasure of poetry - our species first and perhaps deepest language, understanding poetry and its form, the contexts in which it was spoken, written, survived and been translated, illuminates human history - language being the clearest sign of our species as a social and thinking animal. Despite the fact that I come from a peoples for whom this poetry is part of our - my - history, I knew nothing about it. This book describes it in its history, and the poetry itself illuminates the humanity it was by and for! Wonderful!

This is the rarest of all things, a compelling collection of poems. I bought the book because I buy anything Gabriel Levin writes. I would have preferred a new collection of poems by Levin, but wondered who could be worthy of his attention. Halevi, it turns out to those, like me, not already in the know, was a virtuoso wordsmith whose work was honed in a cauldron of hot competition in an age that appreciated such things; an entirely new world in the art of words, half a millennium back, but as timeless as Pushkin. I had a similar reaction the first time I heard Asleep at the Wheel, having never heard of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys. Levin's contribution to the reader's enjoyment and edification is indispensable. The life of Halevi is a wonder in itself, but, unlike Pound's, his poetry is more interesting than his life. He lived an artistic life of an effette sophistication reflective of his age (who knew?), blended, somehow with his Jewish heritage (Lahakat Ha Kaverit?), but died a mystic. In addition to the substantial introduction written in crystalline prose, each poem is annotated for context and references. Its a two-fer (Halevi AND Levin), and a winner.