Open Closed Open: Poems

Amichai writes of the language of love, and tea with roasted almonds, of desire and love. Of a Jewish cemetery whose groundskeeper is an expert on flowers and seasons of the year, but no expert on buried Jews; of Russian shirts embroidered in the colors of love and death; of Jerusalem, the city where everything sails: the flags, the prayer shawls, the caftans, the monks' robes, the kaffiyehs, and young women's dresses. The poet tenderly, mischievously, breaks open the grand diction of the revered Jewish verses and supplications and suddenly discovers the light that his own experience casts upon them. Here, the bread of memory and the circuses of forgetting, nostalgia for God and a better world, dust and heat, and tamarisk trees that stand as flight attendants for the next millennium, saying, "You can still get a seat on the third millennium before liftoff." Open Closed Open-poems at once meditative and playful, anxious and full of hope, sung in a language of biblical directness and meaning, that through the microcosm of the everyday give us the gift of the world at large.

Literature & Fiction

Bloch, Chana

AMICHAI, Yehuda

Poetry

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

The poems in Mrs. Dumpty are about “a great fall,” the dissolution of a long and loving marriage, but they are not simply documentary or elegiac. What interests Chana Bloch is the inner life: how we are formed by our losses and our parents’ losses, how we learn what we need to know through our intuitions and confusions, how we deny and delay and finally discover who we are.

Mrs. Dumpty

University of Wisconsin Press

The poems in Mrs. Dumpty are about “a great fall,” the dissolution of a long and loving marriage, but they are not simply documentary or elegiac. What interests Chana Bloch is the inner life: how we are formed by our losses and our parents’ losses, how we learn what we need to know through our intuitions and confusions, how we deny and delay and finally discover who we are.

Mrs. Dumpty (Volume 1998) (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible

History & Criticism

Univ. Of California Pr.

The Secrets of the Tribe

Tilbury House Pub

A new translation brings together Hebrew scholarship, historical and religious background information, and poetic sensibilities.

The Song of Songs: A New Translation (English and Hebrew Edition)

Bloch, Ariel

Audio Literature

The Past Keeps Changing: Poems

Sheep Meadow Pr

A poetry collection by noted translator Chana Bloch, author of four collections of poetry. As an inter-generational poet, Bloch explores the dynamics of family, relationships, Judiasm, life, and death.

Blood Honey

Autumn House Press

Chana Bloch's collection of new and selected poetry explores a retrospective view on Jewish texts and traditions, illness, death, gender, memory, and family life.

Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems 1980-2015

Chana Bloch’s newest poetry collection, The Moon is Almost Full, focuses frankly and tenderly on the themes of aging and death. Bloch doesn’t shy away from the dark places, but she was a trustworthy guide. These remarkable poems remind the reader to take joy where we can find it and relish the everyday. Bloch’s clear and direct voice makes her poems accessible favorites for all readers. Anyone interested in poetry dealing with aging, cancer, family relationships, and Judaism.

The Moon is Almost Full

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Books by Bloch, Chana