Poetry
שני גנים
Not translated into English
Yona Wallach · 1969
Synopsis
Some forty poems in sixty pages, in which a voice tells of the folds of its moods and its loves for various partners, in an inventive Hebrew that takes liberties with the norm. The vocabulary of the Jewish tradition sits alongside the spirit of the sixties, its music and its art. In “Shir kadmashnati”, subtitled “About Godard”, a voice that mixes biblical language with cinema asks to be shown this “other sex” everyone talks about so much. Two poems bear the title of the book; one imagines raisins that would grow on a body from head to toe.
Context
The book appeared from Dagah, which published experimental works; the house soon disappeared, and the author went through a crisis that led her to hospital and kept her from writing for a long time. It continued a first collection, Devarim, and was reprinted in 1976 in the volume Shira, which received the Kugel Prize. Ilan Wirtzberg and Shimon Gelbetz set “Shir kadmashnati” to music, and it ranked seventh on the radio chart in 1981; other pieces were sung by Yardena Arazi or Rona Kenan.
Who it is for
A slim collection, with no French edition. It is worth knowing that the words of the Jewish liturgy are used there against their usual sense, and that this was then a provocation.
Prizes and reception
An “excellent erotic book” according to Globes; several of its poems have become well-known songs.