Yehuda Amichai was first brought to attention in this country by his inclusion in Modern Poetry in Translation (1965). The magazine's editors, Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes, here provide a selection of Amichai's poetry translated by various hands, placing his achievements alongside those other Eastern European poets with whom he was first introduced - Zbigniew Herbert, Miroslav Holub, Vasko Popa, Czeslaw Milosz and Andrei Voznesensky - while demonstrating what makes his own talent so unique. In Ted Hughes's words, Amichai was 'the poet whose books I still open most often, most often take on a journey, most often return to when the whole business of writing anything natural, real and satisfying, seems impossible. And that after thirty years of feeling the same way about him. The effect his poetry has on me is to give me my own life - to open it up somehow, to make it available to me afresh, to uncover all kinds of riches in every moment of it, and to free me from my mental prisons'.

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) was Israel's most popular poet, as well as a literary figure of international reputation. In this collection, renowned translators Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell have selected Amichai's most beloved poems, including forty poems from his later work. A new foreword by C.K. Williams, written especially for this edition, addresses Amichai's enduring legacy and sets his poetry in the context of the new millennium.

In poems marked by tenderness and mischief, humanity and humor, Yehuda Amichai breaks open the grand diction of revered Jewish verses and casts the light of his own experi-ence upon them. Here he tells of history, a nation, the self, love, and resurrection. Amichai's last volume is one of medi-tation and hope, and stands as a testament to one of Israel's greatest poets.
"Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open"
"in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed"
"within us. And when we die, everything is open again."
"Open closed open. That's all we are."

--"from" "I WASN'T ONE OF THE SIX MILLION:
AND WHAT IS MY LIFE SPAN? OPEN CLOSED OPEN"