About the Book
First book-length collection of the work of the celebrated Israeli poet.
Table of Contents:
Preface Tsipi Keller From Underwater Poems and Other Poems (1975) On the Shore, Tel Aviv, Winter 1974 From the Songs of Crazy Dolores A Brief Love From Freefall (1979) Traveling to Jerusalem on a Moon Night Hair of Night Freefall The Water Queen of Jerusalem Reckless Love I Drew My End Near For Handling Pain Daily Record Chameleon Niche A Sex-Mechanic in Berkley Sitting in the Wall Going Up and Down the Stairs The Magical Cat And the Whiteness Grew Stark Optimism in an English Meadow From Chameleon or the Principle of Uncertainty (1986) Tutti's Seven Energy Balls Voices Near the Sea Poem about Sky, Stone, Sea Suddenly An Open Letter to Poetry Readers Dissolves Relationship, 2 I Went to Work as an Ostrich Signs From Matter (1990) Once I Knew Such Tenderness A Hat's Architecture Elegy for a Friend Who Lost Her Mind Tale about an Inside-Out Dress Bear Song Parrot in My Brain A Hidden Passenger Blues in a Jar Reality Crumbs in Cafe Marsand Sometimes At Noon Busy Eurydice *(First line: And now what?) From Love of the Dragon (1995) The Soul or Possibly A Moment in the Inner Glass Birthmark Cubism Scanner (tr. by the poet) The Love of Trees Wings German Boot Internal Gymnastics Sub-Matter Three Women, Strangers, Watch Me by the Sea From A Hidden Passenger (1999) Organism, Chaos Let Me Have a Bowl Greenhouse Effect The Glow of the Child Pictures from a Diary Space Pockets Laundry The Objects Nearly Suckling From Portrait of Father and Daughter (2004) To Watch Life I Put Over My Head I'm Sitting And How You're Trying To Make Me Laugh This Man *(First line: When I came in here today) Father Who Comes and Appears From Secret Details from the Transparent Binder (2007) The Cute Word-Strollers More and More They Wrap When Pain Becomes a Flower Metaphors Here in the Hidden House Ants In Such a Furnace of Noon So Why Don't I Don't Tell Me Double Exposure in the Black Forest A Half-Day Off Love at McDonald's The Cat Frasier as a Philosophy Major A Moment Tries to Catch Itself by Its Tail Cinema If Only I Were a Fearless Biker Sixty-Five Million Years Ago Short Ones From the Diary of a Penguinette (tr. by the poet) Mrs. Darwin (tr. by the poet) From Witches (2009) A Witch Bent on Healing The Witch Who Did Not Cushion Her Life Mutant Witch Witch Breaks Witch in Fact Hopeful Witch The Witches' Chorus Monologue of the Witch Impregnated by the Devil The Fat Witch's Blues Witch Discusses the Color Scale From Portrait of Mother and Daughter (2010) Weaving A Small Prayer Scar Tissue Ejection Seat Life as an Enormous Beast She Back Yard In the Tiny Speck From the Notebook Mother My First Dream about You The Neighborhood Cats, And Also the Birds Someone Went Past And Now Afterword Dan Miron Acknowledgments About Raquel Chalfi About Tsipi Keller About Dan Mion Index of Titles and First Lines
About the Author :
Raquel Chalfi is the author of many volumes of poetry, and her work has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Prime Minister's Prize, the Ashman Prize, the Bialik Prize for Poetry, and the Brenner Prize for Poetry. She is also a playwright and filmmaker, and has taught film at Tel Aviv University. She lives and works in Tel Aviv. The author of nine books, Tsipi Keller is a novelist and translator. Her previous translations include Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (also published by SUNY Press) and Maya Bejerano's The Hymns of Job and Other Poems. She lives and works in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Review :
Praise for Raquel Chalfi "Raquel Chalfi's poems are filled with sharp intelligence, but also passion, gusto, and surprise. You never know where these poems are going, but they are carrying a fully lived life of pleasure and pain with them-and often they will sneak up on you and make you laugh. Or else make you want to dance." - Alicia Ostriker "This is very wise poetry, insightful, often reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska-in its lucidity, its intellectualism, its new humanism ... The range of its subject matter and the consistency of its philosophy are unique and highly impressive." - Ariel Hirschfeld "Raquel Chalfi electrifies words that are very familiar to us, and makes us see, for the first time, what we have seen many times without seeing. She's a lyrical poet, subtle and precise, whose work radiates warmth, life, and wisdom." - Amos Oz "Chalfi's poetry is complex, it cannot be defined or labeled as belonging to any particular literary trend-a multifaceted poetry, linguistically rich and daring." - Haaretz "Chalfi is an important poet. There is independence and risk-taking in her work, and she has broken through several literary fences ... You can feel the earth shaking under your feet ... Her poetry is unique and remarkable ... No one writes like her." - Gabriel Moked "Chalfi tries to seize nothingness, to peel off the layers of spiritual existence ... She spreads her broad poetic wings over all this with great momentum and unimaginable gentleness." - Dimui Praise for Tsipi Keller's Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry "...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 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 Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse has a volume of such significance been published." - The Jewish Daily Forward "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 "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
