In his fusions of the sensual and the spiritual, the ordinary and the exalted, the sexual in the suffering psyche and the intelligent consciousness searching and spinning through history, myth and layers of language, Shabtai is one of the most exciting poets writing anywhere, and certainly the most audacious. The poems have a wonderful almost vertiginous energy, an enormous erudition, and a startling, finally inspiring candor. A splendid book brilliantly translated by Peter Cole - C.K.Williams

Aharon Shabtai's poetry is of epic range: personal and historical, full of hard won knowledge and the sexual dramas the Greeks allowed their gods and themselves. He can be placed in a line that stretches from Biblical to Greek origins to Catullus to Joyce to Jean Genet and other masters of language, revelry, and revelation - Stanley Moss

Contents:

Introduction - Peter Cole
Love
Teacher's Room
Before School
Kibbutz
Our culture
The Dining Hall
Education
The Domestic Poem
Begin
The Revolt
from part II
Divorce
The Car
A Street
The last year of my marriage
Spoon and Fork
The Prayer Book
Sometimes a step
The Heart
The Onion Basket
Masha, my mother
I tossed and turned
To My Daughter
The Shoe
The Door
Honor
Ziva
Two or three months apart
I'm obliged to honor your cunt
I pay no attention
The body's our final farm
Ziva
I brush the teeth of the beast
The essence of wisdom
I pound my egghead
The pig reads nothing
Metazivika
Like the ant and the seed
Through folly
Like a butterfly
My heart's so full of shit
With each passing season and year
Day after day after day
When you were twenty
The Heart
Consecration
For National Poetry Week 1992
Again you're in paris
Finding it hard to fall asleep
I've Always Missed Out
Drenched with Sweat
If All the World Were Contained
Ah Nili
Never Again Will I Break that Record
Happiness
Nothing Will Come of You