The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse

Front Cover
T. Carmi
Viking Press, 1981 - Fiction - 608 pages
This stunning anthology gathers together the riches of poetry in Hebrew from "The Song of Deborah" to contemporary Israeli writings. Verse written up to the tenth century show the development of piyut, or liturgical poetry, and retell episodes from the Bible and exalt the glory of God. Medieval works introduce secular ideas in love poems, wine songs and rhymed narratives, as well as devotional verse for specific religious rituals. Themes such as the longing for the homeland run through the ages, especially in verse written after the rise of the Zionist movement, while poems of the last century marry Biblical references with the horrors of the Holocaust. Together these works create a moving portrait of a rich and varied culture through the last 3,000 years.

From inside the book

Contents

INTRODUCTION
9
NOTE ON MEDIEVAL HEBREW GENRES
51
NOTE ON THE SYSTEMS OF HEBREW
57
Copyright

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About the author (1981)

Born in New York City, Carmi grew up in a home where Hebrew was the mother tongue. Having lived as a child in Palestine, he immigrated in 1947. He has taught at Brandeis, Oxford, and Stanford, and was poet-in-residence at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Carmi has published 10 volumes of poetry in Hebrew. Thus, far, three of these works have appeared in English translation. In Israel he was awarded the Shlonsky Prize for Poetry, the Brenner Prize for Literature, and the Prime Minister's Award for Creative Writing. He was also awarded the 1982 Irving and Bertha Neuman Literary Award of New York University's Institute of Hebrew Culture and Education and the 1982 Kenneth B. Smilen/Present Tense Literary Award for his translation and editing work for The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse.

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