Details

Subject(s)

• Wallach, Yona—Criticism and interpretation [Browse]
• Poetics [Browse]
• Hebrew poetry—History and criticism [Browse]

Series

• Monographs of the Hebrew Union College ; no. 30. [More in this series]
• Monographs of the Hebrew Union College ; no. 30 [More in this series]

Summary note

"In this fascinating study, Zafrira Lidovsky Cohen presents the first full-length critical analysis in English of the works of maverick Israeli poet Yona Wallach (1944-1985). Although Wallach is often remembered only for her outrageous and unconventional personality and the controversies engendered by her sometimes shamelessly erotic verse, she is nevertheless regarded by many of her friends and colleagues as the most important among the Israeli poets of her generation - perhaps even the greatest Hebrew poet of modern times. She has had a profound effect on Israel's cultural life ever since her works began to appear in periodicals in the early 1960s. As Cohen demonstrates, her poetry is rooted in the poetic revolution in Israel during the 1950s and in many ways epitomizes the literary climate of her time. It also reflects the cultural crises that shook the academic world of the 1960s and the intellectual battles many artists fought with the "prison-house" of semiotic systems in which the human mind, they felt, was entrapped. Mysticism, religion and prophecy, passion, genius, sex and madness are only some of the terms associated with this woman and her poetic art, which one critic has called a "unique combination of elements of rock and roll, Jungian psychology and street slang, break-neck pace and insistent sexuality."" "Cohen first presents an overview of Wallach's short life and surveys her critical reputation. Then, drawing on her own rich and varied background in Bible mythology, Hebrew language, and Poststructuralist and Postmodernist literacy and linguistic theory, Cohen traces Wallach's poetic corpus, translates and interprets representative examples of her works, and situates them within a variety of historical and literary contexts."--BOOK JACKET.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-258) and index.

Contents

• Introduction: "I Get a Picture of a Most Powerful Person"
• 1. The Rise of an Israeli Cultural Legend
• 2. On Language and Signification: Wallach's Self-Reflexive Poems
• 3. From Direct Observation to Indirect Evocation: Wallach's Early Work
• 4. Testing the Boundaries of the Self: Wallach's Confessional Poetry
• 5. Masking and Unmasking: Female Images in Wallach's Early Poetry
• 6. The Poetics and Politics of Wallach's Erotic Verse
• 7. Whose Voice Is It Anyway: The Dismantling of Mental and Social Systems in Wallach's Later Work
• 8. Yona Wallach Pulled by Her Own Strings.

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ISBN

0878204547 (alk. paper)

LCCN

2003040730

OCLC

51519765

RCP

C - S

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