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    Poetry From The Middle East

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    Dennis De Jesus
    The document provides an analysis of the poem "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. It summarizes that the poem describes a bombing in technical terms but then expands the emotional consequences of the bombing to encompass the entire world. It also provides biographical details about Amichai, noting that he was an Israeli poet who wrote in Hebrew but had his works translated to English with Ted Hughes. He wrote many poems condemning war and violence.

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    Poetry From The Middle East

    Uploaded by

    Dennis De Jesus
    46 views15 pages
    The document provides an analysis of the poem "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. It summarizes that the poem describes a bombing in technical terms but then expands the emotional consequences of the bombing to encompass the entire world. It also provides biographical details about Amichai, noting that he was an Israeli poet who wrote in Hebrew but had his works translated to English with Ted Hughes. He wrote many poems condemning war and violence.

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    Poetry from the Middle East

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    The document provides an analysis of the poem "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. It summarizes that the poem describes a bombing in technical terms but then expands the emotional consequences of the bombing to encompass the entire world. It also provides biographical details about Amichai, noting that he was an Israeli poet who wrote in Hebrew but had his works translated to English with Ted Hughes. He wrote many poems condemning war and violence.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    46 views15 pages

    Poetry From The Middle East

    Uploaded by

    Dennis De Jesus
    The document provides an analysis of the poem "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. It summarizes that the poem describes a bombing in technical terms but then expands the emotional consequences of the bombing to encompass the entire world. It also provides biographical details about Amichai, noting that he was an Israeli poet who wrote in Hebrew but had his works translated to English with Ted Hughes. He wrote many poems condemning war and violence.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 15

    POETRY FROM

    THE MIDDLE EAST

    PRESENTED BY:
    DENNIS A. DE JESUS
    ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR
    The Diameter of the Bomb
    The diameter of the bomb was thirty
    centimeters
    and the diameter of its effective
    range about seven meters,
    with four dead and eleven wounded.
    And around these, in a larger circle
    of pain and time,
    Two hospitals are scattered
    and one graveyard. But the
    young woman
    who was buried in the city she
    came from,
    at a distance of more than a
    hundred kilometers,
    enlarges the circle
    considerably,
    And the solitary man
    mourning her death
    at the distant shores of a
    country far across the sea
    includes the entire world in
    the circle.
    And I won’t even mention the
    crying of orphans
    that reaches up to the throne
    of God and
    beyond, making a circle with
    no end and no God.
    SUMMARY AND STUDY GUIDE
    OVERVIEW

    The Diameter of the Bomb” is a lyric poem


    written by Yehuda Amichai. It was published
    in 1976 in his third book of poetry, Time. The
    poem’s elegant, accessible, and somber
    style was inspired by Modern poets such as
    Ted Hughes and W.H. Auden, as well as
    Amichai’s study of Hebrew literature and the
    Bible during his childhood and young
    adulthood.
    The poem was translated from
    Hebrew into English by Amichai and
    Ted Hughes. It is an anti-war poem
    with clear and simple diction that
    employs technical language to
    describe a bomb from a scientific
    viewpoint, creating a sense of false
    comfort in relation to war.
    The poet then subverts this
    understanding of war in the
    subsequent lines, amplifying the
    emotional consequences of the
    bombing by showing the
    consequences of the bombing
    on the world as a whole.
    The poem does not refer to any
    particular bombing or war but rather
    seeks to capture a universal, non-
    specific bombing. This poem is one
    of Amichai’s many poems that decry
    violence and condemn any who
    believe that war is justified in the
    name of peace.
    Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet and
    novelist who was born in Wurzburg, Germany
    in 1924. His Orthodox Jewish family left
    Germany in 1936 when Amichai was 12 years
    old, fleeing the Holocaust. His family then
    moved to Palestine. He fought on the side of
    the British forces during WWII, and he later
    fought against the British during the Arab-
    Israeli struggles in the years during which
    Israel was being established.
    His first language was German, but he
    learned Hebrew as a child and later
    English, though he wrote his poems in
    Hebrew throughout his lifetime. Following
    the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, during
    which he fought with the Israeli forces,
    Amichai attended Hebrew University of
    Jerusalem, where he studied Hebrew
    literature and the Bible.
    He taught at secondary schools following
    graduation and published his first poetry
    book Now and In Other Days in 1955,
    which already featured his unique voice
    and poetic skill. His next poetry
    collections, Poems, published in 1969,
    and Selected Poems of Yehuda Amichai,
    published in 1971, established his
    international reputation.
    For these collections, he and Ted
    Hughes worked together to translate his
    poems into English. During his life
    Amichai would publish two novels,
    eleven poetry collections, and a book of
    short stories. In 1982, he received the
    Israel Prize for Poetry, and in 1986 he
    was named an Honorary Foreign
    Member of the American Academy of
    Arts and Letters.
    Amichai died of cancer in 2000
    at his home in Jerusalem at the
    age of 75. His work has been
    translated into 37 languages.

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