Open Closed Open: Poems
by Yehuda Amichai
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Amichai writes of the language of love, and tea with roasted almonds, of desire and love. Of a Jewish cemetery whose groundskeeper is an expert on flowers and seasons of the year, but no expert on buried Jews; of Russian shirts embroidered in the colors of love and death; of Jerusalem, the city where everything sails: the flags, the prayer shawls, the caftans, the monks' robes, the kaffiyehs, and young women's dresses. The poet tenderly, mischievously, breaks open the grand diction of the show more revered Jewish verses and supplications and suddenly discovers the light that his own experience casts upon them. Here, the bread of memory and the circuses of forgetting, nostalgia for God and a better world, dust and heat, and tamarisk trees that stand as flight attendants for the next millennium, saying, "You can still get a seat on the third millennium before liftoff." Open Closed Open-poems at once meditative and playful, anxious and full of hope, sung in a language of biblical directness and meaning, that through the microcosm of the everyday give us the gift of the world at large. show lessTags
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According to the book jacket Amichai is Israels leading poet. This was his last book of poetry. Many of the poems in this collection are inspired by a small piece of stone that Amichai kept on his desk - a fragment from a Jewish tombstone from a cemetery that was destroyed a thousand years ago. The fragment reads "amen" Most of the poems are about or reference religion and Jewish culture/ history. Amichai has a unique style and the poems are lovely and funny. Here's an example:
When God packed up and left the country, He left the Torah
with the Jews.They have been looking for Him ever since,
shouting,"Hey, you forgot something, you forgot."
and other people think shouting is the prayer of the Jews.
When God packed up and left the country, He left the Torah
with the Jews.They have been looking for Him ever since,
shouting,"Hey, you forgot something, you forgot."
and other people think shouting is the prayer of the Jews.
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Jewish Books
367 works; 24 members
Author Information
111+ Works 1,602 Members
Yehuda Amichai was born in Germany and immigrated to Palestine in 1936. His novels and poetry are innovative in their use of Hebrew terms. Following World War II and Israel's War of Independence in 1948, Amichai began to introduce new words of technical, legal, and administrative meaning into his poetry to replace sacral phrases. Amichai's poetry show more reflects the modernizing of the Hebrew language within the last 45 years. "One of Amichai's most characteristic effects in his poetry is the mingling of past and present, ancient and modern, person and place: the here and now for him inevitably recalls the past" (Judaica Book News). One of Israel's most highly regarded poets, Amichai shared the Israel Prize for Literature with Amir Gilboa in 1981. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Genres
- Poetry, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 892.4 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages Afro-Asiatic literatures Jewish, Israeli, and Hebrew
- LCC
- PJ5054 .A65 .P3813 — Language and Literature Oriental languages and literatures Oriental philology and literature Hebrew Literature Individual authors and works
- BISAC
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- 175
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- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
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- English, Hebrew
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- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
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