Full Description
This 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.
Contents
Contents
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
