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The poet and Talmud scholar examines Jewish texts, sexuality, and human vulnerability in poems that brim with wonder, sadness, sensuality, and humor.Kosman’s second volume in English explores Jewish texts —Bible, Talmud, midrash — alongside bodies, physical desires, military experiences, even a refrigerator. Demons and fantasy enter these poems; so do politics, so does God. These are not religious poems in a conventionally liturgical, “inspirational” sense; yet they point to the big questions that religion asks: about love, hate, desire, violence, transgression, disappointment.
About the author
Poet and scholar Admiel Kosman is the author of nine books of Hebrew poetry, six academic books on Talmud and Midrash, and two bilingual Hebrew-English collections,
So Many Things Are Yours (forthcoming, Zephyr Press, 2022) and
Approaching You in English (Zephyr, 2011), both translated by Lisa Katz. Born in Haifa, Israel, he has lived in Berlin since 2003. He is Professor of Jewish Studies at Potsdam University, and academic director of the Abraham Geiger College, the first Reform rabbinical seminary to open in Continental Europe since the Holocaust.
Translator and poet Lisa Katz has published two collections of her own poems and translated several volumes of Hebrew poetry.
Late Beauty, by Tuvia Ruebner, which she co-translated with Shahar Bram, was a finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She also translated
The Absolute Reader, a chapbook by Miri Ben Simhon (Toad Press, 2020);
Approaching You in English, co-translated with Shlomit Naim-Naor (Zephyr, 2011); and
Look There, by Agi Mishol (Graywolf, 2006). She lives in Jerusalem.
Summary
The poet and Talmud scholar examines Jewish texts, sexuality, and human vulnerability in poems that brim with wonder, sadness, sensuality, and humor.
Kosman’s second volume in English explores Jewish texts —Bible, Talmud, midrash — alongside bodies, physical desires, military experiences, even a refrigerator. Demons and fantasy enter these poems; so do politics, so does God. These are not religious poems in a conventionally liturgical, “inspirational” sense; yet they point to the big questions that religion asks: about love, hate, desire, violence, transgression, disappointment.
Foreword
Advance galleys to Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, NPR.E-blast announcements and offers of review copies to our list of 250+ reviewers, literary journals, bloggers, and literary organizations.Advance review copies on Edelweiss.Coop available.Review and feature article campaign to 15 publications, including poetry, Jewish, Israeli.Featured title at AWP, Boston Book Fair, Brooklyn Book Festival, ALTA, Tucson Festival of Books.Eblasts to creative writing, Jewish and Israel Studies departments for course adoption.Online virtual readings.Social media campaign on FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, and e-blasts to Zephyr’s customer list of 1,500 names.Will submit to PEN Poetry in Translation Award, National Jewish Book Award, Griffin International Poetry Prize, National Translation Award, Derek Walcott Poetry Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award.Virtual or in-person reading tour (if in-person, to New York, Boston, DC).
Additional text
“ I’ve long admired the poetry of Admiel Kosman, one of the leading poets of Israel, yes, certainly, but truly of the world… The passions are real in his poetry, and send a current through his vision of history, ancient to now, as if the Bible itself could dream. In these expert translations by Lisa Katz, Kosman’s poems come alive in English, al dente, with a delicious firmness and urgency, a tart quickness full of pleasure.” — Joshua Weiner, Tikkun
“ Admiel Kosman’s poems are surreal and real, playful and serious, simple and complex. Reading them recalls F. Scott Fitzgerald’s comment: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’ In these poems, replace ‘function’ with ‘sing,’ and rejoice.” — Natasha Saje, author of Vivarium and Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory
“ Kosman is called to teach: he is the poet rebbe who patiently, bravely, instructs his reader about the obstacles that must be overcome and the risks that must be taken if one is truly to encounter the Other, that person who is wholly apart from the self.” — Maeera Y. Schreiber, AJS Review, April 2019
