The Dove That Didn't Return: Poems

A poet and female commander in the Israeli Defense Forces creates an original perspective from the war-torn front lines of the Middle East conflict. The Dove That Didn't Return tackles the canon of war poetry, an almost exclusively male-penned body of poems. In the book, biblical stories, verses, and fragments are rewritten through the eyes of a female lieutenant in the Israeli Army. It is a contemporary poetics on the revelations of war from an Israeli perspective never before told--a woman, and a soldier at that. This debut full-length collection follows upon the publication of her critically acclaimed chapbook, Between Sanctity and Sand, from Finishing Line Press.

About the Author :
Yael S. Hacohen is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. She has received research/teaching fellowships from Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was an NYU Veterans Workshop Fellow, International Editor at Washington Square Literary Review, and Editor-in-Chief at Nine Lines Literary Review. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review, LIT, Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly Magazine, Colorado Review, and many more. Hacohen published her chapbook Between Sanctity and Sand with Finishing Line Press in 2021. Hacohen served as a lieutenant in the 162nd Armored Division of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Review :
"Yael Hacohen's The Dove That Didn't Return is a transformative book. You may enter this collection thinking you know what it means to be a woman, a mother, a soldier, a witness. You may enter it thinking you know plenty about violence and loss, duty and commitment, tenderness and mercy. But you will leave this book with different wisdom. Hacohen's unforgettable poems reckon with themes that reveal--above all, what it means to be human." --Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful "Sacred and profane, biblically infused yet utterly contemporary, Yael Hacohen's beautiful, harrowing, war-torn, and soulful lyrics leave me shaken and uplifted. The Dove That Didn't Return is timely and timeless."--Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel: A Poem and 100 Poems to Break Your Heart Praise for Between Sanctity and Sand "A quietude lives in Between Sanctity and Sand--through Yael Shoshana Hacohen's strong voice."--Yusef Komunyakaa "An heir to Yehuda Amichai, Yael Hacohen is a young poet with an old soul, and her harrowing, war-torn lyrics bring something utterly fresh into American poetry--a shocked memory of military life, a desert consciousness that hovers between the sacred and the profane, and an awe-inspiring sense of poetry that is both ancient and new. This short book is a gem."--Edward Hirsch