Ronny Someck is an enormously popular poet and radio host in Israel. Born in Iraq, he spent his childhood in a transit camp for new immigrants. This is his first full-length book to appear in English; his Sephardi voice is rich with slang, hot music, street gangsters and army commandos, and the odors of falafel and schwarma. In what other poet could we find Tarzan, Marilyn Monroe, and cowboys battling with Rabbi Yehuda Halevi for the hearts and souls of Israelis?

Poetry. Jewish Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Goldberg. Moshe Dor's poems breathe, smell and taste like Israel. They express the pressures of living in a land constantly under siege, where hope and terror live side by side, where there is a fierce hatred of war and a fierce craving for peace. Here current events unfold in biblical landscapes. This is also a book about love the love for a woman as well as a motherland. Cover art by Mordechai Ardon."