but first i call your name by Hadassa Tal trans. By Joanna Chen Harvard University Press Neil Astley

Neil Astley

and his always masterful free verse conveys a life thoroughly lived and brilliantly perceived

looking on

" —Dana Amir

but first i call your name by Hadassa Tal trans. By Joanna Chen Harvard University Press Neil Astley"Hadassa Tals poetry is a manuscript of pain and beauty. How beautiful is all this beauty, she writes, How will I surrender you to the ground. But the power of these poems is just that: they do not surrender beauty to the ground. They give it to the wind, to the water, to the dance, they elevate it higher than the dome of thought, they sift through the death from the death within. These broken poems create the elusive miracle that allows us to grasp