Poet and anthropologist Zali Gurevitch answers the figure of a famous Hebrew writer who appears in his mother’s dream (see ‘When a famous writer knocks at the door’) by saying boldly: “We’ve had enough of the Fate of the Jewish People. Let me be. Let me shuffle to my study in my advanced years (as old as the state) from where I can look out at the rooftops of Tel Aviv [and] write.”
Zali Gurevitch was born in 1949 in Berkeley, California, to Israeli parents, and arrived in Israel at the age of six weeks. He has published ten books of poetry, and is the author of three non-fiction books – one on the Israeli and Judaic notion of place, a reading of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), and on the anthropology of conversation. His new book on the Song of Songs will be published in 2012.
Gurevitch has written essays on Israeli art and on Hebrew poetry, and has translated poetry from English (John Ashbery, Charles Olson, W.B. Yeats) and French (Francis Ponge). He is a professor (emeritus) of anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He lives in Tel Aviv.
Bibliography
Poetry in Hebrew
Excerpts from an open dream, Jerusalem, Ahshav, 1980
Broken line, Jerusalem, Keter, 1984
Land, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 1989
Book of the voice, Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1990
This and that, Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996
The book of the moon, Tel Aviv, Helicon, 1999
Days, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2002
Time baba, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2005
Double click, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2008
Verses, Tel Aviv, Helicon, 2009
Poetry translations from English into Hebrew
John Ashbery, Self-portrait in a convex mirror, Jerusalem, Ahshav, 1982
Rachel Zvia Back, Azimuth, Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2000
Non-fiction in Hebrew
Al Hamakom (On place/God), Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2007
Heshbono shel Kohelet (On Kohelet/Ecclesiastes), Tel Aviv, Babel, 2008
Seeha (A conversation), Tel Aviv, Babel, 2011
Essays on literature in English
‘Poetry Conversation and Culture’ in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, ed. N. Denzin, Vol. 14 (1993), pp. 91–94
‘The Symposium: Culture as Daimonic Conversation’ in Human Studies, Vol. 21 (1998), pp. 437–454
‘The Tongue’s Break Dance: Theory, Poetry and the Critical Body’ in Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 40 (1999), 525–540
‘Eternal Loss: An Afterword’, in Revealment and Concealment: Essays by H. N. Bialik, Ibis Editions, Jerusalem, 2000
‘The Serious Play of Writing’ in Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 6 (2000), pp. 3–8
‘What is a Field?’ in Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, Vol. 2 (2002), pp. 300–308
‘Writing Through: The Poetics of Transfiguration’ in Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, Vol. 2 (2002), pp. 403–413
Link
Zali Gurevitch analyses the handshake between Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin
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