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Chana Bloch’s Followers (5)
Chana Bloch
Born
in Bronx, New York
March 15, 1940
Died
May 19, 2017
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Mrs. Dumpty (Volume 1998) (Wisconsin Poetry Series)
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published
1998
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7 editions
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Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems
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published
2015
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4 editions
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The Past Keeps Changing: Poems
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published
1992
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2 editions
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Blood Honey
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published
2009
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2 editions
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The Moon Is Almost Full
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The Song of Songs
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The Secrets of the Tribe
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published
1980
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3 editions
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Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible
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published
1985
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Waiting for the Messiah
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LEARNING FROM TRANSLATION: The Judith Lee Stronach Memorial Lectures On the Teaching of Poetry
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“Flash after flash across the horizon:
Tourists trying to take the Grand Canyon
By night. They don’t know
Every last shot will turn out black.
It takes Rothko sixty years to arrive
At the rim of his canyon.
He goes there only after dark.
As he stands at the railing, his pupils open
Like a camera shutter at the slowest speed.
He has to be patient. He has to lean
Far over the railing
To see the color as of darkness:
Purple, numb brown, mud-red, mauve
-an abyss of bruises.
At first, you’d think it was black on black
Something you son’t want to look at, he says
As he waits,
The colors vibrate in the chasm
Like voices:
You there with the eyes,
Bring back something from
The brink of nothing
to make us see.”
―
Tourists trying to take the Grand Canyon
By night. They don’t know
Every last shot will turn out black.
It takes Rothko sixty years to arrive
At the rim of his canyon.
He goes there only after dark.
As he stands at the railing, his pupils open
Like a camera shutter at the slowest speed.
He has to be patient. He has to lean
Far over the railing
To see the color as of darkness:
Purple, numb brown, mud-red, mauve
-an abyss of bruises.
At first, you’d think it was black on black
Something you son’t want to look at, he says
As he waits,
The colors vibrate in the chasm
Like voices:
You there with the eyes,
Bring back something from
The brink of nothing
to make us see.”
―
“A friend of mine tells a story about some Israeli students who were called up in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As soon as they were notified, they went back to their rooms at University, and each packed his gear, a rifle, and a book of Yehuda Amichai’s poems.”
― The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
― The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
“SWIMMING IN THE RAIN
Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky
find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,
and I’m swimming back to the beginning.
The forecasts were wrong.
Half the sky is dark
but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false. Thank God
I’ve got the good sense at last
not to come in out of the rain.
The waves open
to take in the rain, and sunlight
falls from the clouds
onto the face of the deep as it did
on the first day
before the dividing began.”
―
Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky
find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,
and I’m swimming back to the beginning.
The forecasts were wrong.
Half the sky is dark
but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false. Thank God
I’ve got the good sense at last
not to come in out of the rain.
The waves open
to take in the rain, and sunlight
falls from the clouds
onto the face of the deep as it did
on the first day
before the dividing began.”
―
