Take a Breath, You're Getting Excited - (Jewish Poetry Project) by Yakir Ben-Moshe (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- In the passed-out light of nightwhen bodymelts into fleshletters break out of us& gaps are fired into the poem.Take a Breath catapults you right into the frenzy spiral of Yakir Ben-Moshe's dating life.
- Author(s): Yakir Ben-Moshe
- 128 Pages
- Poetry, Middle Eastern
- Series Name: Jewish Poetry Project
Description
Book Synopsis
In the passed-out light of night
when body
melts into flesh
letters break out of us
& gaps are fired into the poem.
Take a Breath catapults you right into the frenzy spiral of Yakir Ben-Moshe's dating life. Against the backdrop of violence, war, and trauma that has always permeated Israeli society and shaped the personal as well as the political discourse, the round dance of lovers entering and exiting and re-entering the poet's life takes on a timeless quality. The passionate vows and furious arguments between Ben-Moshe and his girlfriends, their break-ups and lovemaking in sweltering and noisy Tel Aviv are both a respite from and a mirror of the upheaval and breathlessness of day-to-day life in a country whose citizens constantly expect the unexpected. Their longing for simplicity, their solitude and clamoring for attention, their wit, self-doubt and cynicism all become tangible in Dan Alter's brilliant, playful, and vibrant translation.
About the Author
Yakir Ben-Moshe, an Israeli poet of Iraqi descent, won the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature in 2012. He has published five books of poetry and one of children's literature. His poems have been translated into English, Russian, Greek, Chinese and Turkish. He lives with his wife and children in Tel Aviv, where he is the Director of the Bialik House, as well as a teacher of creative writing.
About the Translator
Dan Alter's poems, translations and reviews have been published widely; his first collection "My Little Book of Exiles" won the Poetry Prize for the 2022 Cowan Writer's Awards. "Hills Full of Holes," his second collection, will be published by Fernwood Press in 2025. He lives with his wife and daughter in Berkeley where he works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.
Review Quotes
"Yakir Ben-Moshe poetry has an unstoppable energy that only few contemporary poets, anywhere, possess. But how is it made, and how can I claim this, without knowing his native Hebrew? Perhaps because this is one of those special cases when poetry is, in fact, found in translation. What gets through to us, in these beautiful renderings by Dan Alter, is terrific use of tone, which is delivered in English that manages to be both clear and textured, memorably direct and yet intriguing. The playfulness of Ben-Moshe comes to us both via subject matter and its delivery, yes, and at the same time we see that the work is both serious, even metaphysical while still filled to the brim with specifics of this life's comedy. And so, open this book on any page. Go ahead. What will you see? The lover calls. Then visits with a box of tissues. Meanwhile, outside the horizon is spread open like a photo album hung upside down. One eyelash drops from the sky. And so the poem ends. What do you learn? You learn that in this absurd place some call time we live together with this strange gift some call wonder. And, I, for one, am grateful to Dan Alter for reminding us of that via his marvelous translations of Ben-Moshe that indeed read like first-rate poetry in English."
-Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa
"Yakir Ben Moshe is a rare contemporary voice in Hebrew poetry. His collection, Take a Breath, You're Getting Excited, achieves the seemingly impossible, dancing lightly across the politically, historically, and socially burdensome terrain of Israeli daily life. Ben Moshe's verses expose the humor and vivaciousness of human interactions in this explosive geo-cultural space without losing sight of the gravity beneath their feet. The poems, especially resonant in the current moment, remind us of the absurdity of violence and the deep-rooted force of life that struggles to find expression, as is made evident by darkly comedic lines like 'Finally I broke up with Elinor because of Hamas.' Ben Moshe's Hebrew is playful, witty, and incisive, and Dan Alter's beautiful translation brings this tightrope walk of levity and weight to vibrant life in English."
-Dr. Yael Segalovitz, Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; Author, How Close Reading Made Us: The Transnational Legacies of New Criticism