Finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry presented by the Jewish Book Council

from "At Your Side"



Years I walked at your side

like our prophet Isaiah

barefoot naked and bare

I will put on no cover

until you see me

until you recognize an other

one person

at least

and so know yourself as well



Mordechai Geldman came of age as a poet in the seventies, an auspicious and transformative time in the development of modern Hebrew literature, as poets and writers rejected the flowery, the hyperbolic, and the sentimental and opted instead for a more direct and intimate speech. While his early poems tended to rely on linguistic exploration, his vision soon turned inward, as he came to favor the simple, the true, the authentic. Geldman's poems are direct and accessible, touching on and revealing the divine and the sacred in the so-called mundane.

Mordechai Geldman was born in Munich in 1946 and arrived in Israel in 1949. An art critic, artist, author, poet, and psychotherapist, Geldman has published fourteen volumes of poetry and five essay collections, and is the recipient of the Chomsky Award, the Brenner Prize, the Yehuda Amichai Prize for Hebrew Poetry, the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Writers, and the Bialik Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into English, Arabic, Czech, French, Greek, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. He lives and works in Tel Aviv. Tsipi Keller is a novelist and translator. Her previous translations include Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry and Reality Crumbs: Selected Poems, by Raquel Chalfi, both also published by SUNY Press.

Introduction
Tsipi Keller and Ruth Kartun-Blum

I Wrote Write Will Write: Author's Preface to the Hebrew Edition

From New Poems (2010)

Voice
Poems from Amirim
Missing (1)
Missing (2)
Who Do You Think You Are
Loss
Carob
[ I had a revelation ]
The body
I Don't Know
Mangs
Tattoo
At Your Side
Signal, Flicker
What Will I Tell
Poems about My Left Eye
Poems of the River: Leave Behind
[ All at once ]
An Ecological Poem
Rivers
Slowly
Word
Green
[ I've forgotten my aging ]
Buddies
A Short Story
Water
[ The bird dives ]
Only a Moment
I Wanted to Tell You

From Tamir's Poems (2007)

Inscribed
Let Me
Similes
True Compassion
Gift
60
Cell Phone
The Spirit and the Soul
Worry
I Dreamt You
Another Bracelet
Deer
The Date
The Son
Eurydice
Rumi
There's Love
And Now
Text Messaging Poems
Sixty
How could I, Tamir

From Poem of the Heart (2004)

Home Poems
At First I Wished to Speak Up
Form
The Neurotic's Poem
[ The voice of a bird ]
Poet
Oh My Love
Love Poem
N. B.
The Café

From Oh My Dear Wall (2000)

[ In the depths of childhood ]
[ In the end I couldn't save her ]
[ Before she died ]
Firing Squad
Chu
The Wall
Blue Head
The Sinai Desert Flies
A Lone Tourist
Hair
Putsina
Role

From Book of Ask (1997)

Another Poet
Friendly Dragon
Holy Ground
Dolinger
Book
Opportunity
I Won't Travel This Summer
Abused Neighbor
Yes
My Death 1
My Death 2
Waste
From the cycle "Summer Sequence"
Almost Flowers

From Eye (1993)

The Last Interview
Line
Bomb
Nocturnes
The Ceiling's Looking Glass
Porn 6
The Hottentot Venus (Porn 8)

From Milano (1988)

Café
Guy with a Beard and a Ponytail
Human Engineering
Buddha of the Light
Paris
Time
Spring
Poplar in the Window
Leaves

Acknowledgments
About Mordechai Geldman
About Tsipi Keller
About Ruth Kartun-Blum
Index of Titles and First Lines