Monday, January 01, 2007

New Year's Resolution: Keep better track of what I'm reading

Today: Hebrew journalist/poet Haim Gouri's Words in my Lovesick Blood. His poem Inheritance is representative. Referring back to the Akedah, the last two stanzas read:

Isaac, we're told, was not offered up in sacrifice.
He lived long,
enjoyed his life, until the light of his eyes grew dim.


But he bequeathed that hour to his progeny.
They are born
with a knife in their heart.

(p.27)

I haven't read Gouri until now, and I like him. Here's another representative stanza. From I Live Now In An Ancient Book:
...
I move between the saintly
and the lovesick.
I see men and women
returned from the world to come.

(p.107)

And from Often I Dream Dreams, I love this line:

Often I dream dreams which belong to strangers. (p.71)

[Poems by Haim Gouri, trans and ed by Stanley F. Chyet, Wayne State U Press, 1996]

I think this was one of the books Abe and I bought together at Open Books the last time he was there, before he went to assisted living. It's been sitting on the shelf waiting for us to read.