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Next to Genesis, no book in the Hebrew Bible has had a stronger influence on Western literature than the Song of Songs. This attractive and exuberant edition helps to explain much of its power, while leaving its mystery intact. -- Alicia Ostriker, The New York Review of Books. Quite simply the best version in the English language. Its poetic voice, intimate, dignified, and informed by meticulous scholarship, carries us into the Eden of the original Hebrew text: a world in which the sexual awakening of two unmarried lovers is celebrated with a sensuality and a richness of music that are thrilling beyond words. -- Stephen Mitchell.
The newest collection by noted poet and translator Chana Bloch
A poetry collection by noted translator Chana Bloch, author of four collections of poetry. As an inter-generational poet, Bloch explores the dynamics of family, relationships, Judiasm, life, and death.
The new and selected poetry collection by noted translator Chana Bloch.
"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."—Anthony Hecht
The poems in Mrs. Dumpty are about “a great fall,” the dissolution of a long and loving marriage, but they are not simply documentary or elegiac. What interests Chana Bloch is the inner life: how we are formed by our losses and our parents’ losses, how we learn what we need to know through our intuitions and confusions, how we deny and delay and finally discover who we are.
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. Amichai’s last volume is one of meditation and hope, and stands as a testament to one of Israel’s 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. That’s all we are. —from “I WASN’T ONE OF THE SIX MILLION: AND WHAT IS MY LIFE SPAN? OPEN CLOSED OPEN”
[Ravikovitch's] song is both ancient and new, and it is unutterably poignant. --Stanley Kunitz
The Song of Songs, often referred to as the Song of Solomon, is one of the greatest love poems of all time. The Song celebrates the sexual awakening of a young woman & her lover, & the intoxicating experience of falling in love. This book of the Old Testament, composed over 2,000 years ago, continues to be a source of inspiration to poets & lovers. In their lyrical new translation, Ariel Bloch & Chana Bloch restore the sensuousness of the original in language that is rich, joyous, & passionate. Faithful to the Hebrew text, the Blochs strip away the veils of mistranslation that have obscured the power & meaning of the poem. The English & Hebrew are on facing pages. Notes.