Open Closed Open

by Yehuda Amichai

A friend of mine, the brilliant young novelist Nathan Englander, introduced me to this poet when I visited him in Jerusalem a couple of years ago. They are the poems of an older man, about love and death and all the stuff that poets usually do. But he has bits and pieces about the insane struggle for Israel to exist and the history that led to its foundation. It also has all the humanity and prophetic arrangement of word and image that is amongst the best poetry, so that’s why I recommend it.