As a Breakup

In the current book “As a breakup” Alfi’s landscapes are varied, and he conquers new poetic realms with his increasingly sharp language. Indeed, the “I” remains at the foundation of his poetry, but there is no prying in this self, and this is indeed what he writes in one of the poems of the new collection, in a tone of restrained self-mockery:

Being busy with yourself is work

The one who cancels the one who deals with it.

Yossi Alfi’s ninth book of poems, “Like Farewells” is a continuation and at the same time a spectacular innovation in the poetic world of the poet. Alfie is an amazing character in his abundance of deeds and talents. The general public knows him mainly as a stage person, actor, director and leading storyteller. But this book will testify, like its eight predecessors and even more than them, that even in Hebrew poetry we will give it a place of honor. At the beginning of his career as a poet, there were clear echoes in his poetry of his childhood and youth when he arrived in a new country, which did not welcome many of its new citizens. But his protest poetry, being a member of the “transitional generation”, gradually gave way, and a poetry of continuous observation took its place. As much as his poetry is personal and individualistic, it was never detached from the dynamics of everyday life. The relationship between him and the landscape around him (the landscape of both man and space) has now become a dialectical element, even if the relationship between him and his environment is not always reciprocal

Written by Eric Bendak-Habib, 4/26/2009 5:48 AM

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