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Open Closed Open: Poems Hardcover – January 1, 2000
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2000
- Dimensions6.75 x 1 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100151003785
- ISBN-13978-0151003785
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Throughout the collection, Amichai returns again and again to this convergence. In "Once I Wrote 'Now and in Other Days.' Thus Glory Passes, Thus the Psalms Pass," for example, he chronicles the destruction of Huleh swamp, an open ecosystem drained by the Israeli government during the 1950s to fight malaria and provide arable land: Now half a century later they are filling it with water again
because it was a mistake. Perhaps my entire life
I've been living a mistake
Indeed, Amichai's misgivings seem to extend to the very foundations of the modern Israeli state. Might not the "bright-colored birds" who fled the swamp "for their lives" be figures for the displaced Palestinians? Huleh, we learn, was eventually restored. But sowing the seeds of peace is as precarious an enterprise as rebuilding a fragile ecosystem.
Elsewhere, "My Son Was Drafted" records a father's concern and fear for his military-age child. Amichai wishes his son were joining an army without a war, where soldiers serve as decorations around monuments, where the ornate and impractical replace the camouflaged and tactical. But here, too, the father has a few spiritual heirlooms to pass on to his son, which incidentally allow him to open up yet another closed system: I would like to add two more commandments to the ten:
the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not change,"
and the Twelfth Commandment "Thou shalt change. You will change."
My dead father added those for me.
A man, Amichai suggests, is more pliable once he has been opened up, refreshed, newly defined. Cultures, alas, are not so flexible. But the rich language of Open Closed Open, which has been meticulously translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, holds out the hope that nations, too, might submit to the Twelfth Commandment. --Ryan Kuykendall
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Review
"A major work by one of the world's greatest living poets - but not, one hopes, the last word." -- Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2000
Open Closed Open is the uncanny record of genuine inspiration. Happy is the man who has so much in his soul. -- Leon Wieseltier
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition (January 1, 2000)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0151003785
- ISBN-13 : 978-0151003785
- Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.75 x 1 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,599,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #859 in Middle Eastern Poetry (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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The following is a sample of some other poems:
The famous French king said, Après moi, le deluge!
Noah the Righteous said, Before me, the flood,
and when he left the ark he declared, The flood is behind me.
But I say, I am right in the middle of the flood,
How do the visions of the prophets see me?
The burning bush sees me as a man extinguished but alive.
The Jewish people read Torah aloud to God
all year long, a portion a week,
like Scheherazade who told stories to save her life.
By the time of Simchat Torah rolls around,
God forgets and they can begin again.
Communal prayer: Is it better to ask “Give us peace”
with cries of woe, or to ask calmly, quietly?
But if we ask calmly, God will think
we don’t really need peace and quiet.
We are all children of Abraham
but also the grandchildren of Terah, Abraham’s father.
And maybe it’s time the grandchildren
did unto their father as he did unto his
when he shattered his idols and images, his religion, his faith.
That too would be the beginning of a new religion.
In his poetry, he intertwines subjects such as love, holocaust, the bible, and day-to-day life, in a subtle way. His metaphors are amazingly beautiful, especially due to the fact that he uses really simple vocabulary. He plays with ideas, not with words.
In "Open Closed Open", I like the way he writes about bible figures as men (or women) and for a moment reminds us of their reality, not their power and superiority. I also love the comparisons he builds between orthodox and non-observant customs. IMHO, this is his best book.
I have read the book both in Hebrew and in English, and this version is very well translated, even though the translator changes the order of the poems (I cannot understand the reason).
If you want to learn Hebrew, he is a very good source. I know that in Israel there are several bilingual versions of his books (not this one, unfortunately). You should look for them. That's the way I did it!