Erez Bitton's poetry collection You Who Cross my Path, translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller, has just been selected by World Literature Today as a May Nota Bene.
The WLT review calls the collection "concise yet emotional," with poems that "range from discussions of love and beauty to childhood, the poet’s blindness, and his identity as an Israeli of North African descent and the first poet to employ Judeo-Arabic dialect in his work. This bilingual edition includes work from two of his books, allowing an extensive entry to his world without sight but with profound observation."
This first US publication of Erez Bitton, one of Israel’s most celebrated poets, recalls the fate of Moroccan Jewish culture with poems both evocative and pure. Considered the founding father of Mizrahi Israeli poetry, a major tradition in the history of Hebrew poetry, Bitton’s bilingual collection dramatically expands the scope of biographical experience and memory, ultimately resurrecting a vanishing world and culture.
To view the complete WLT list of May Nota Benes, click here.
You Who Cross my Path is available now at the BOA Bookstore.