Yehuda Amichai

Infobox Person
name = Yehuda Amichai


image_size = 169px
caption =
birth_date = 3 May 1924
birth_place = Würzburg, Germany
death_date = 22 September 2000
death_place = Israel

Yehuda Amichai (May 3, 1924 - September 22, 2000, Hebrew: יהודה עמיחי) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many to be the greatest modern Israeli poet, and was one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.

Life and career

His biographical writings often dealt with the issues of day-to-day life, and were less overtly literary than many 19th century Hebrew poets such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik. His writings are characterized by gentle irony, and the pain of damaged love. It was a love for people, for the Torah and Eretz Yisrael, most of all it was a love for the city of Jerusalem.

Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, as Ludwig Pfeuffer, to a religious family, then immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936. He first worked as a teacher of physical education. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the fighting arm of Jewish settlements in pre-state Palestine. He fought in the World War II (British Army Jewish Brigade) and the Israeli War of Independence as a young man. He also fought in several of Israel's other wars. [http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/14604/edition_id/283/format/html/displaystory.html] He became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region, working with Arab writers.

Following the war, Amichai attended Hebrew University, studying biblical texts and Hebrew literature. After that, he taught in secondary school. He married Hana Sokolov, who was his second wife. Amichai had two sons, Ron and David, and a daughter, Emmanuella.

Many of his songs and poems include quotes from the Torah.

He was "discovered" in 1965 by Ted Hughes, who was to collaborate with Amichai on the translation of his poetry, later published in two books: "Amen" in 1977 and "Time" in 1979.

Death and legacy

He died from cancer in 2000, at 76.

Referring to him as "the great Israeli poet," Jonathan Wilson in The New York Times (December 10, 2000), wrote that he "is one of very few contemporary poets to have reached a broad cross-section without compromising his art. He was loved by his readers worldwide (his poems have been translated into more than 30 languages) perhaps only as the Russians loved their poets in the early part of the last century. It is not hard to see why. Amichai's poems are easy on the surface and yet profound: humorous, ironic and yet full of passion, secular but God-engaged, allusive but accessible, charged with metaphor and yet remarkably concrete. Most of all, they are, like the speaking persona in his "Letter of Recommendation," full of love: "Oh, touch me, touch me, you good woman! / This is not a scar you feel under my shirt. / It is a letter of recommendation, folded, / from my father: / 'He is still a good boy and full of love.' "

"He should have won the Nobel Prize in any of the last 20 years," wrote Wilson, "but he knew that as far as the Scandinavian judges were concerned, and whatever his personal politics, which were indubitably on the dovish side, he came from the wrong side of the stockade."

Works in English

* "A Life of Poetry, 1948-1994". Selected and translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

* "Amen". Translated by the author and Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

* "Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers: Recent Poems". Selected and translated by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.

* "Exile at Home". New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

* "Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers". Translated by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

* "Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition". New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

* "Not of this Time, Not of this Place". Translated by Shlomo Katz. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

* "On New Year’s Day, Next to a House Being Built: A Poem". Knotting [England] : Sceptre Press, 1979.

* "Open Closed Open: Poems". Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. New York: Harcourt, 2000. (Shortlisted for the 2001 International Griffin Poetry Prize)

* "Poems of Jerusalem: A Bilingual Edition". New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

* "Selected Poems". Translated by Assia Gutmann. London: Cape Goliard Press, 1968.

* "Selected Poems". Translated by Assia Gutmann and Harold Schimmel with the collaboration of Ted Hughes. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.

* "Selected Poems". Edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. London: Faber & Faber, 2000.

* "Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai". Edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Newly revised and expanded edition: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

* "Songs of Jerusalem and Myself". Translated by Harold Schimmel. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

* "Time". Translated by the author with Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

* "Travels". Translated by Ruth Nevo. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1986.

* "Travels of a Latter-Day Benjamin of Tudela". Translated by Ruth Nevo. Missouri: Webster Review, 1977.

* "The World Is a Room and Other Stories". Translated by Elinor Grumet. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984.

Bibliography

* Lapon-Kandeslshein, Essi. "To Commemorate the 70th Birthday of Yehuda Amichai: A Bibliography of His Work in Translation". Ramat Gan (Israel): Institute of the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1994.

Cultural References

*A song, "Too Tireless To Tame", inspired by Yehuda Amichai's poem "A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention" is included on Carell Casey's 2007 CD entitled "A New Day".

ee also

"The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself" (2003), ISBN 0-8143-2485-1

External links

* [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/125 Academy of American Poets bio]
* [http://www.uvm.edu/%7Esgutman/Amichai.htm Yehuda Amichai's Poetry] Introduction to Amichai's poetry, in audio. Many links.
* [http://www.ithl.org.il/amichai/ Yehuda Amichai 1924-2000] tribute at The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
* [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/amichai.htm Yehuda Amichai]
* [http://swordsandploughshares.blogspot.com/ swordsandploughshares.blogspot] "And they’ll beat swords into plowshares and plowshares into swords, and so on and so on..." Amichai, Sort of an Apocalypse, 1958
* [http://www.literaturfestival.com/bios1_3_6_509.html Biography from the international literature festival berlin]
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9699843 "Love, War and History: Israel's Yehuda Amichai," NPR]
* [http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/shortlist_2001.php?t=4#excerpt Reading of Yehuda Amichai's "I, May I Rest in Peace" by Chana Bloch]