Yona Wallach

Yona Wallach (Hebrew: יונה וולך; June 10, 1944 – September 26, 1985) was a Hebrew-language poet who lived in Israel. Quotes I weep and strive, strive and weep fragment from untitled poem [first line: "My consciousness melting away"], translated into English by Linda Zisquit in Wild Light (1997) They draw from each other life and brainremain like burnt outeyeholes long and emptysurrounded by lines markings contoursof what was once life "Vampire Couple", translated into English by Linda Zisquit in Wild Light (1997) The hypnotist was hereshe spoke of the body tired from all the yearsserving and doing things for usand I went out from the bodyand sat on the edge of the bedlooked at itand climbed up to lick itstroke ittake care of it. "Outside The Body", translated into English by Linda Zisquit in Wild Light (1997) Place a large damby the wellsprings of the paingather with itlike waterwatch over itso it doesn't dispersefor it is your life. untitled poem translated into English by Linda Zisquit in Wild Light (1997) My body was wiser than Iits ability to suffer was less than mineit said enoughwhen I said more fragment from untitled poem translated into English by Linda Zisquit in Wild Light (1997) and that's not what'll satisfymy hunger nothat's notwhat'll easemy mindnothat's not it. untitled poem translated into English by Linda Zisquit in Wild Light (1997) Quotes about Yona Wallach was one of Israel’s most important poets and had a profound effect on Israeli culture. Wallach's poetry is characterized by breaking conventions regarding gender, sexuality, and religion, among others. Zafrira Lidovsky Cohen, "Yona Wallach" The revolutionary poet who paved the way for the poets of the 1980s was Yonah Wallach. She dared to present a provocative woman with blatant sexuality and expressed a wounded and rejected female soul which turned towards madness and mystery. Risa Domb, Introduction in the book New Women's Writing from Israel ...the most cosmopolitan artist that Israel ever produced without ever having gone out of the country. She preceded her time in her intuitions, with no terminology, in understanding and phrasing cultural, social and political processes. Miri Kubovy, quoted in Close Encounters with Twenty Israeli Writers by Eilat Negev (2003) The iconoclastic poet, the most eccentric and colourful that Israeli literature ever knew Eilat Negev, Close Encounters with Twenty Israeli Writers (2003) Linda Zisquit, from the Translator's Note to Wild Light: Selected Poems (1997) note: "All quotes by Yona Wallach in this essay are taken from an interview with Hillit Yeshurun, editor of Hadarim, Tel Aviv (fall 1984)." Though Wallach died in 1985 at the age of forty-one, her work still exerts a major influence not only on poets writing in Hebrew today but also on the Israeli cultural imagination. She lived close to the senses and wrote often of the ruthlessness of poetry as a way out of the inner chaos. "I saw that I haven't a defense. That's what rescued me...that's simply life itself...I don't live without poetry. Poetry is natural bread. You also need music. But what saved me was the need to understand life. The thinking about life saved my life. I wanted to decode for myself what I saw, the riddle of the world. That's the way I wrote my understanding." Yona Wallach, beyond immersing herself in the immediate and palpable, evokes a near-hallucinatory world of the inner self. She rejects any suggestion of influence from the Hebrew tradition. "I hated Hebrew poetry and literature. It seemed like one big deception. I loved Baudelaire and Walt Whitman. It seems to me that Hebrew poetry misses the point...it conceals everything from us. They didn't speak to us about suffering. They spoke about Bialik, that fat self-satisfied man adored by the entire nation, but they didn't speak to us about madness. Everything was fat, everything was national...I hated Shlonsky and Alterman and all the poetry. I hated Amichai..." And although Dahlia Ravikovich, one of Israel's leading confessional poets and Wallach's contemporary, has used Biblical echoes of spoken Hebrew to dramatize personal struggles, even distorting the sacred to mythologize the self, much of her early lyrical poetry is characterized by classical restraint, Biblical conciseness, and female stereotypes. Wallach dismissed her, saying: "Dahlia isn't involved enough with sex. She's not revolutionary enough...She isn't a feminist." External links Jewish Women's Archive page The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature page Category:1944 births Category:1985 deaths Category:Jewish feminists Category:Poets from Israel