Description
Book SynopsisThis first U.S. publication of Erez Bitton, one of Israel's most celebrated poets, recalls the fate of Moroccan Jewish culture with poems both evocative and pure. Considered the founding father of Mizrahi Israeli poetry, a major tradition in the history of Hebrew poetry, Bitton's bilingual collection dramatically expands the scope of biographical experience and memory, ultimately resurrecting a vanishing world and culture. Preliminary Background Words My mother my mother from a village of shrubs green of a different green. From a bird's nest producing milk sweeter than sweet. From a nightingale's cradle of a thousand Arabian nights. My mother my mother who staved off evil with her middle fingers with beating her chest on behalf of all mothers. My father my father who delved into worlds who sanctified the Sabbath with pure Araq who was most practiced in synagogue traditions. And I-- having distanced myself deep into my heart would recite when all were asleep short Bach masses deep into my heart in Jewish- Moroccan. The 2015 recipient of the Israel Prize, Erez Bitton was born in 1942 to Moroccan parents in Oran, Algeria, and emigrated to Israel in 1948. Blinded by a stray hand grenade in Lod, he spent his childhood in Jerusalem's School for the Blind. He is considered the founding father of Mizrahi Israeli poetry in Israel--the first poet to take on the conflict between North African immigrants and the Ashkenazi society, and the first to use Judeo-Arabic dialect in his poetry.
Trade ReviewWINNER OF THE 2015 ISRAEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE A World Literature Today Nota Bene for 2016 "The concise yet emotional poems of Erez Bitton range from discussions of love and beauty to childhood, the poet's blindness, and his identity as an Israeli of North African descent and the first poet to employ Judeo-Arabic dialect in his work. This bilingual edition includes work from two of his books, allowing an extensive entry to his world without sight but with profound observation." -World Literature Today "Erez Bitton takes in the world through uniquely sharp senses, and all that his exquisite senses absorb he transmits to us in a clear and precise language like a fine violin whose function is not to glorify the player but the music." -Dahlia Ravikovitch "One cannot overstate the importance of Erez Bitton's poetry. At least one of the reasons for this is self-evident: Bitton is the dominant figure in the creation and development of a new and significant tradition in the history of Hebrew poetry--the tradition of Israeli Mizrahi poetry. Many consider him the founding father of this tradition, which dramatically expanded the scope of the biographical experience and cultural memory and became a vital part in the formation of contemporary Hebrew poetry during the last few decades... One is hard-pressed to name another Israeli poet who can claim such an achievement." -Eli Hirsch "It is near impossible to list the number of poets influenced by the poetry of Erez Bitton." -Mois Ben Harash "Erez Bitton is among the pioneers who have introduced the issue of identity in Hebrew poetry. His poetic language draws from the Hebrew of the city, the Hebrew of the outskirts, the Hebrew of the Bible and the Sources, as well as from the liturgical poetry of North Africa; he has also pioneered the inclusion of Jewish-Moroccan Arabic in his poems, right alongside the Hebrew. In his work, the experience of emigration and the clash of cultures attain both personal and universal dimensions, and his poems about blindness shed a light on intimate as well as social landscapes. He is the first to have given a rich and moving poetic expression to the 'other' and his culture." -The Yehuda Amichai Poetry Prize "[Bitton's] poetry is not a subjective one, trapped in the private mythology of its creator. One gets the sense that behind each poem there are people, lives, pain and suffering that hold up the poem and endow it with depth and weight far greater than the weight of the poem as a poem." -Amos Levitan "Bitton's poetry may be defined in several ways, some of which, per force, appear contradictory: he is a great rebel within the tradition of contemporary Hebrew poetry, and he is also someone who has gone back to earlier traditions, precisely those that contemporary Hebrew poetry rebelled against. He is the founding father of a new poetic tradition, and is also the inheritor and practitioner of existing traditions... He rebuilds the continuum of memory through family stories and the figures of his parents as an alternative to the dominant history that rejected them." -Elmog Behar
Table of ContentsContents Introduction: The Poetry of Erez Bitton FROM Blindfolded Landscapes (2013) Blindfolded Horses The Dog and His Master The Poem of the Cane This Summer For the Algerian Poet Rabah Belamri To Say Desert Treaty with the Elder Son Late Learning You Who Cross My Path My Father Gave the Neighbors Roll Call Sights When I Was a Child of Light With the Kids Hoarse Rababa Your Eyes More and More Not to See Granada Forgetting Something in You You and I Yesterday's Kiss Families at the Jerusalem School for the Blind Sketching the Future at the Jerusalem School for the Blind Children at the Jerusalem School for the Blind Becoming a Weaver The Child Sitting in Corners at the School of the Blind Voices For Gvira Mommy Wrap for Me Yom Kippur at the School for the Blind For Elisheva Kaplan On Top of a Wall FROM Timbisert, A Moroccan Bird – New and Selected Poems (2009) A Broken Nightingale A Broken Nightingale Heart Valve My Mother, Her Children Wouldn't Live Lod Cemetery At Sunset On Winter Mornings For Aharon ben Chmou Ballad about a Town at Sunset The Wail of Women Lullaby in the Town of Oran We Are Strangers Spanish Song Clipped Orange Trees Poem at the Heart of Jerusalem In the Sealed Rooms Cesspits Poem of 1991 Our Pains at Night A Moroccan Offering Preliminary Background Words Zohra El Fassia A Marginal Boy and a Social Worker Elegies for ben Shushan A Purchase on Dizengov Moroccan Wedding On the Earthquake in Agadir Meeting The Book of Na'na The Love of Children in White Caftans Uncle Yehuda Sharvit between Marrakesh and Draa Summary of a Conversation Mother Is Cajoling a Bird Al-Keskas ul-Feran 1 Al-Keskas ul-Feran 2 At the Feet of the Women Zaish Sullika's Qasida Intercontinental Bird To Speak Within the Light In Praise of the Dreamers of Jerusalem To Speak of a City to its Face My Mother Collects Down Scaffolding Addendum: Excerpts from Ana Min al-Maghrib [I'm from the Atlas Mountains]—Reading Erez Bitton's Poetry (Hakkibutz Hamehuchad, 2014)—nine essays, by scholars and poets, selected and edited by Ktzia Alon and Yochai Oppenheimer. Acknowledgments About Erez Bitton About Tsipi Keller About Eli Hirsch Critical response to Erez Bitton's work Index of titles and first lines
