Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) (Suny Series, Modern Jewish Literature & Culture) [Paperback]

Tsipi Keller (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 11, 2008 | Series: Suny Series, Modern Jewish Literature & Culture

Selections from twenty-seven Hebrew poets, many of whose poems appear here in English for the first time.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

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.

"...an introduction for an English-speaking audience to the wealth of contemporary poets writing in Israel today ... The careful translations are sensitive to both Hebrew cadence and English idiom. Covering a wide range of themes including love, politics, doubt, death, identity, and even poetry itself, these poems are a carefully curated collection." -- Jewish Book World

"This poetry from Israel reveals a culture far more diverse than American stereotypes would suggest ... [The poets] share ... a precision of language and feeling that should seem both familiar and fresh to non-Israeli readers of poetry." -- HeadButler.com

"This new anthology of Hebrew poetry in translation has two special strengths--tremendous depth and a personal touch ... It's clear that [Keller] has strong feelings on which poets matter, and wants to explain why they matter." -- Jerusalem Post

"Poets on the Edge deserves to be in every poetry lover's library, and should be on every Jewish bookshelf. Not since Carmi's 1981 The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse has a volume of such significance been published." -- The Jewish Daily Forward

"...a feast of a book ... brilliantly translated by a gifted poet. For American readers, who are likely to know much more about Israeli fiction than its poetry, ... Poets on the Edge will be a revelation." -- Alicia Suskin Ostriker, JBooks.com

"This commendable project casts a wide net, demonstrating the impressive range of urgencies and preoccupations in the contemporary literary landscape of Israel." -- Critical Mass, the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors

"This comprehensive and amazing anthology is a great read best taken slowly, savoring each page of outstanding poetry. Tsipi Keller has had the patience and intelligence to select a stimulating and powerful group of poems, with accurate and very readable translations." -- Shirley Kaufman

"Poets on the Edge is a true masterpiece. The translations are sensitive, wise, graceful, and insightful; the selection is rich and inviting. What a brilliant achievement!" -- Miriyam Glazer, American Jewish University

"Keller's breathtaking anthology, some twenty years in the making, shows that voices of contemporary Israeli poetry can be compellingly narrative, elegantly lyrical, elegiac, passionate, eccentric, and even phantasmagoric. Her translations convey the skepticism, wit, and energy of these poets who speak of loves and breakups, query their places in Jewish history, contemplate metaphysical questions, and paint pictures of everyday life in Israel." -- Lynn Levin, Drexel University and The University of Pennsylvania

Contributors include Yehuda Amichai, Dan Armon, David Avidan, Maya Bejerano, Ruth Blumert, T. Carmi, Raquel Chalfi, Aminadav Dykman, Mordechai Geldman, Tamir Greenberg, Israel Har, Hedva Harechavi, Sharron Hass, Irit Katzir, Tsipi Keller, Yitzhak Laor, Agi Mishol, Amir Or, Dan Pagis, Hava Pinhas-Cohen, Ruth Ramot, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Asher Reich, Shin Shifra, Ronny Someck, Yona Wallach, Meir Wieseltier, Natan Zach, and Nurit Zarhi. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Tsipi Keller was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the United States since 1974. Her short fiction and her poetry translations have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and her novels include Jackpot; Retelling; and The Prophet of Tenth Street. Keller has also translated several poetry collections, including Dan Pagis's Last Poems and Irit Katzir's And I Wrote Poems. She lives in West Palm Beach, Florida. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (September 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791476863
• ISBN-13: 978-0791476864
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #937,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tsipi Keller was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the U.S. since 1974. The author of eight books, she is the recipient of several literary prizes, including a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Award. Her novels include "Retelling" and "Jackpot"; and her most recent translation collections are: "Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry"; and "The Hymns of Job & Other Poems." Her novel "The Prophet of Tenth Street" will be out in early 2012.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review/Alicia Ostriker, January 11, 2009

By 

Tsipi Keller (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) (Suny Series, Modern Jewish Literature & Culture) (Paperback)

This is a feast of a book. Twenty-seven Israeli poets--religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, immigrant and native-born, mostly straight but some gay, almost half of them women, all of them vital, most never published in this country before, each represented by an ample selection of poems--brilliantly translated by a gifted poet. For American readers, who are likely to know much more about Israeli fiction than its poetry, or know only a few names like Amichai, Dan Pagis, Dahlia Ravikovitch and Yona Wallach (all of whom have been well translated into English), Poets on the Edge will be a revelation.

"On the edge," one might ask, of what? "Edgy" is a term we use in art to imply modern or postmodern wit, irony, bite, a cool playfulness, a possible undertone of violence. Edgy in the sense of "nervous and uneasy" certainly describes Israeli society in the `80's and `90's, when most of these poets were published, and it's a mood that saturates and stimulates their writing. For Israeli poets, the edge also suggests the far limit of what Hebrew can do, rooted in its old magnificence as the language of the Bible, lashon hakodesh, the holy tongue, which remains alive in present-day Israel, bracingly interleaved with modern slang, curses borrowed from Russian and Arabic, technical terms lifted from English, and the abundant energy of its reincarnation. Aminadav Dykman's Introduction usefully tracks the history of 20th-century Hebrew poetry in terms of a series of generational transformations, from earnest nostalgia and messianic aspirations, to the mythmaking "place poems" of the Zionist 1940's, and on into the more skeptical language of the street, the kitchen, the bedroom.

One way to read Poets on the Edge is to browse, and let poems snag your attention. In this way I discovered the allegorically inclined David Avidan (b. 1934), and poems like "The Stain Remained on the Wall," which begins

Someone tried to scrub the stain off the wall.

But the stain was too dark (or conversely--too bright).

At any rate--the stain remained on the wall.

In this way I found a Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005) poem I had not known, evoking how "a smelly Mediterranean city/ squats on the water.... her feet covered with scabs,/ her sons dealing knives/ to one another." Evidently Tel Aviv, the city is "flooded/ with crates of grapes and plums... pumpkins, cucumbers and lemons,/bursting with juice and color," and though "not deserving,/ Not deserving of love or pity," the poet writes, "how my soul became bound to hers." Cognizant of Ravikovitch's significance as a peace activist, Keller has included both the famous "Tale about the Arab who Died in the Fire" and the less-well-known poem "But She Had a Son," invoking a present-day Rachel who works at City Hall but speaks day and night to her fallen son, saying (with a piercing echo of Lamentations), "I'm Rachel, your mother,/ Possessed of cognition and free will,/ There's no comforting me."

Other poets who seized my attention included Meir Wieseltier (b. 1941) writing equally straightforwardly of politics and of "the basics/ like a kiss or eating cheese," the provocatively sexy Agi Mishol (b. 1947) with her "complementary nipples,/ one red one green," the sensual Dan Armon (b. 1948) whose poems celebrate squash, apple, cucumber, plum, and "the wondrous wilting of a flower/ in the calm of a vase," and the astonishing Raquel Chalfi, (no date given) whose poem "German Boot," the longest piece in the book, is a masterpiece of realistic and comic self-mockery laced with pungent midrash, ultimately turning surreal, mythic, and terrifying. I won't quote a word here. You have to read it.

Why translation? It is often said that poetry is what gets lost in translation. My own view is that translation of poetry, provided the translations are live poems in the new language, enriches our collective humanity and expands our awareness of "others, and many others," which Shelley said was necessary for the moral life. In any case, Poets on the Edge will send readers who know Hebrew scrambling for the originals of many of the poets here, and will make those who don't know Hebrew want to learn--precisely because these translations are so alive. For English-speaking readers (and writers), both Jewish and non-Jewish, the book will explode whatever lingering stereotypes there may be about Israeli culture. More broadly, it will confirm Israel's place in world literature today as a cornucopia of poetry.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker/JBooks, January 2009

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Diverse, bracing and vivid, January 14, 2009

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (S U N Y Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) (Hardcover)

With all the ugliness in the Middle East, I was delighted to receive 'Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry'. This poetry from Israel reveals a culture far more diverse than American stereotypes would suggest. Almost half of the poets are women; the religious and political affiliations of the 27 poets touch are bracingly varied. What they share is a precision of language and feeling that should seem both familiar and fresh to non-Israeli readers of poetry. The translations are expert, as you'd expect from Tsipi Keller, a veteran translator and the author of the brisk and original novel, 'Jackpot'.