Voices Israel's 49th Anthology: A symphony of contemporary poetry from around the world

What a pleasure it is to be able to report that the Voices Israel Group of Poets in English continues to thrive, and that their mission of fostering poetry and poets is flourishing. Their tireless and proactive sponsorship of poetry results in the publication this year of their 49th anthology of contemporary poetry from Israel and abroad, titled Voices Israel Anthology 2023.

Founded in 1971, the organization, though based in Israel, boasts members from all over the English-speaking world. Monthly meetings, in person or by Zoom, are held in seven locations in Israel, while a Global Group caters via Zoom to more distant members.

Anyone is free to submit up to three poems for inclusion in the annual anthology. In this year’s edition, 64 poets have made it to the printed page, with a total of 104 poems. The volume also includes the winners and runners-up of two poetry competitions sponsored by Voices Israel: the 33rd Reuben Rose competition, which attracted more than 300 entries; and the Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize, named in memory of the gifted young Israeli poet died of cancer at the age of 15.

The poems selected for inclusion in the main anthology span a wide spectrum of topics. Some, dealing with aspects of the same theme, are placed adjacent to each other. A good few touch on the subject of love. Leeor Margalit in “Sunk Cost Love” struggles with the problem of loving a man she knows is wrong for her. Diane Ray in “Our Song of Songs” conveys to her lover the swirl of physical and emotional feelings she experiences, a topic also covered in her own way by Yiskah Rosenfeld in her “In Dreams and Chagali paintings, everything is you.” Ricky Rapaport Friesem’s delicate “Necklace” reflects on the transience of love.

I was much taken with Mark L. Levinson’s poem “Love of Productiveness,” which begins with the lines “The muses weren’t visiting lately at all / So I thought I’d respectfully pay them a call.” He encounters a succession of Greek gods, who list his many failings. Polyhymnia, for example, says witheringly: “I imagine his bookshelves are crowded and deep / but he reads for a minute and wilts into sleep.” That struck home.

Anther topic yielding poems positioned adjacent to each other is Judaism and the Bible, such as “Coming to Torah” by Nikki Stiller, who charts his slow progress at the age of 68 from eating pork to, as he puts it, succumbing “to the embrace of race and kind.” In “Yesterday was Yom Kippur, and I didn’t go to Synagogue,” 66-year-old David Adès regrets being confined to his bed and wonders if he is to be inscribed in the Book of Life. Anne Whitehouse in “Talmud Class” reflects that although the rabbis of old would not have approved of the improved status of Orthodox women, the women still “acknowledge them as our ancestors.”

Reflecting social issues

This year, perhaps reflecting the state of contemporary society, social issues did not feature strongly. “Mourning on the Shores of a Golden Land” by Yocheved M. Zemel evokes the misery of losing a loved one to drugs, while Donna Bechar, in her “On Time,” reflects on those who conscientiously had gone to their Twin Tower offices on 9/11 as opposed to the happy-go-lucky few who, for no apparent reason, had simply taken the day off.

One odd, amusing, and thought-provoking poem is “Cow” by American writer M K Punky. He dreams up the idea that “perfectly flawed human” though he now is, in a previous incarnation he was a cow. He gets flashes of his past existence, and remembers that upon reaching the abattoir, there was nothing to be done to avoid his fate. All he had wanted as a cow was “to feel grass beneath my hooves,” and now he spends his days in the garden “surrounded like a happy cow / by glorious food everywhere I turn.”

First Prize in the Reuben Rose Poetry competition was won by Iris Dan, who appears twice in the main anthology. In the very welcome “Meet the Poets” section at the rear of the volume, she relates that she made aliyah in 1980 from her native Romania. She has published two poetry collections and has a third in preparation. Her winning poem is “The Fear of Slipping through Letters” – a unique take on how the loss of physical strength from old age is reflected in the deterioration of one’s handwriting. “The smaller, the more invisible / I become, the greater the risk / to slip through the loop of an o / get entangled in the bush of an m…”

Reuth Katz, aged 14, won the Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize with her poem “The Little Things.” She points out the enormous value of little things in creating the world that we know and love, and calls on everyone to appreciate the little things “because without them we wouldn’t have / ANYTHING.”

The Voices Israel Anthology 2023 is guaranteed to afford enormous pleasure to anyone who loves the power of words and appreciates the ability of poetry to evoke emotions, paint images in the mind, capture a moment in time, conjure up past experiences, and make one think. It is highly recommended. ■