Description
Poetry. ON RUINS & RETURN is Rachel Tzvia Back's second full-length collection and tracks the cycle of violence marking the lives of Palestinians and Israelis in the last intifadah (uprising).
"The past exists in layers of our present and perhaps nowhere more powerfully than in the place evoked in this beautiful and haunting collection of poems. Rachel Tzvia Back's passionate historical sense illuminates ways in which outer violence touches our deepest subconscious. From a complex of shared circumstances within the seemingly endless struggle between Israel and Palestine, she draws spiritual sustenance. When hope is in retreat and there seems to be 'nothing left / resembling the human / but soldiers on their knees / in the sand,' the austere beauty of this poetry remains."—Susan Howe
Author Bio
Rachel Tzvia Back, poet and award-winning translator, lives in Galilee, in the north of Israel, where her great great great grandfather settled in the 1830s. Her books include WHAT USE IS POETRY, THE POET IS ASKING (Shearsman Books, 2019), A MESSENGER COMES (Singing Horse Press, 2012), and ON RUINS & RETURN (Shearsman Books, 2007).
Author City: Galilee ISR