Variable Directions: Selected Poetry

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Writing in propulsive, staccato sentences, commanding, denying, questioning, at times taking almost a pedagogic stance, Pagis (1930-1986) was one of the most vibrant voices in modern Israeli poetry. A concentration camp survivor, he neither would nor could forget. His poems are surreal, although grounded in a palpable horror--"As to the yellow star: / it will be torn from your chest / immediately / and will emigrate / to the sky." Often he reveals a darker side to familiar Old Testament passages: "The most terrible thing of all is that Job never existed and was just a parable" or "The great fish that vomited out Jonah / swallowed nothing more. Without any prophecy in his guts, he pined away. . . . gangs of crabs / surrounded him, delighted in him, picked him clean." Death-camp memories are distorted to fit a postwar world in verse selected from later books, as Pagis casts an ironic eye on his environment, accepting survival as a question of chance and point of view. In "The Limits of Physics," a boy sits and waits in an armchair with a lightning rod on his head; in "Brain," man's brain declares, "I'm just a dream." Mitchell, known for his translations of Rilke, creates supple, luminous renditions.
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