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PARTISAN REVIEW
kitchen, in our living room, in our bedroom," Israeli novelist Amos Oz
wrote in
Yediot.
After a while, the eulogies got repetitive: the papers printed more or
less the same information, and each devoted a generous amount of
space. I counted three pages minimum in each. For a few days, there
were additional articles, and of course, television and radio aired more
reports. Clearly, people cared about this poet, and they cared about his
poetry.
The amazing outpouring of public grief for Amichai startled me.
Most of the public statements ended with "may his memory be
blessed," a standard ending of eulogies. That
word-blessed-got
me
thinking. When was the last time we Americans blessed our poets?
Though the line is frequently used for the Jewish dead, how appropri–
ate it seemed that a man who spent his life creating memory, arranging
thoughts and events into language, shaping the most frightening facts
and visions into streamlined and memorable form, is blessed for giving
the nation this blessing.
I learned something in Jerusalem in those woozy, shell-shocked days
when Amichai's poems crowded the airwaves and flooded the newspa–
pers . The way to mourn a poet is to give thanks . The way to do it is to
bless, openly and in public. Let me add my name, then, to the long and
diverse list of Amichai's mourners, so wise and loud and obvious in their
recognition of loss.
May his memory be blessed.
Yehuda Amichai died on September
22,
2000,
at the age of seventy–
six. His most recent book, which many consider his magnum opus, was
Open Closed Open
(Harcourt Brace), translated into English by Chana
Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. Several excerpts quoted here are from that
book, while the first excerpt, "God has pity.
. . "
is from
The Selected
Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
(University of California Press) . Amichai
wrote twenty-five books of poetry, some of which have been translated
into English, two novels, two short story books, and three children's
books. Amichai's poems have been translated into thirty-seven lan–
guages, and he has had several English translators.
