YEHUDA AMICHAI (1924-2000) was an internationally acclaimed Israeli poet who was considered by many, including yours truly, to be his country's greatest poet and among the leading poets of the 20th century. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, the 1976 Bialik Prize, and the 1982 Israel Prize, in addition to many international honors. Amichai was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times but never won (shame on you, Sweden), and his poetry has been translated into 40 languages.
Amichai's work deals with issues of day-to-day life, and with philosophical issues of the meaning of life and death. It is characterized by accessible language, gentle irony and vivid imagery, often drawn from the Bible and Jewish history. Like many secular Israeli poets, he struggles with religious faith. His poems are full of references to God and the religious experience, and an abiding love of the land. His love poetry is among the most moving in any language in the past two generations -- some exuberant, some powerfully erotic, many suffused with sadness over separation that casts its shadow on love. In a country torn by armed conflict, these poems poignantly assert the preciousness of private experience, cherished under the repeated threats of violence and death.
His poetry has attracted a variety of gifted English translators on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the present. The most recent offering, assembled by Robert Alter in 2013, is by far the largest selection of Amichai's work to appear in English, gathering the best of the existing translations as well as offering English versions of many previously untranslated poems.
This is an updated version of an earlier torrent. The following books are in PDF or ePUB format as noted:
* Amen (Harper & Row, 1977). Translated by the author and Ted Hughes. -- PDF
* Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers (Sheep Meadow, 1998). Third edition. Translated by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. -- PDF
* Killing Him: A Radio Play (Poetry, July/August 2008). Translated by Haader Makes-Hasson. -- PDF
* Open Closed Open: Poems (Harcourt, 2000). Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. -- ePUB
* Poems (Harper & Row, 1968). Translated by Assia Gutmann. -- PDF
* Poems of Jerusalem: A Bilingual Edition (Harper & Row, 1988). Various translators. -- PDF
* Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, The (FSG, 2015). Edited by Robert Alter. -- ePUB
* Selected Poems (Penguin, 1971). Translated by Assia Gutmann and Harold Schimmel with the collaboration of Ted Hughes. -- PDF
* Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (California, 2013). Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. -- PDF + ePUB
* World is a Room & Other Stories, The (JPS, 1984). Translated by Elinor Grumet, Hillel Halkin, Ada Hameirit-Sarell, Jules Harlow, and Yosef Schachter. -- PDF
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