The lineup outside the Tel Aviv nightclub snaked until the end of the block, but Yonit Naaman and I bypassed the crowds and walked to the front door. People eyed us enviously as the bouncer let us through. Inside, we were giddy over the VIP treatment, joking that it was payback for all those times…
Haim Gouri has won just about every literary prize that Israel has to offer. Yet, in my eyes, he made his strongest, most Zionist statement on January 5, when news broke that he had refused to accept a prize for “Zionist Works of Art,” awarded by the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport. The award…
Aaron Samuels started getting hype as a poet as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis. A co-founder of the school’s popular slam poetry team, WUSLAM, his compelling performances and the depth of his investigation into what it meant to be black and Jewish made him stand out. He’s continued to make his name…
Roy Hasan has been described as the Israeli Eminem. The subversive, indignant, radical 32-year-old Mizrahi poet from a housing project outside Haifa received the prestigious Bernstein Prize and an award of 50,000 NIS from the Israeli Publishers Association this past July. His provocative poem “If There’ll Be Peace, All the Arsim Will Come” sheds light…
A poem by an 11th grade girl from a Hasidic family in Crown Heights has gone viral on social media. “Worst Day Ever?” by Chanie Gorkin was first posted last year on the Poetry Nation website, where Chanie is a member. She was a semi-finalist in the website’s July to December 2014 contest and the…
In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner By Tuvia Ruebner, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back Hebrew Union College/University of Pittsburgh Press, 396 pages, $39.95 Tuvia Ruebner is a poet’s poet. Though distinguished and admired in Hebrew and German literary circles, and despite having publishing 15 books of poetry in Hebrew, he was little…
In the beginning I was given everything And what did I do With myself and your treasures? Only one thing I ask Animates my coming and going Inside your house In the beginning, Given inner speech Enfold us within your sanctuary of hands Inside the tent of every wish Encamped, beloved
Selected Letters of Langston Hughes By Langston Hughes Edited by Arnold Rampersand Knopf, 480 pages, $35 These missives written by one of the most limpid African-American poets are self-concealing in the extreme. Langston Hughes was so discreet that when he was hospitalized for gonorrhea in 1941, he told intimate friends that the problem was arthritis….
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