As always, Amichai speaks (and often sings) in [Amen and Travels of a Latter-day Benjamin of Tudela] with a voice that is deceptively simple, understated, and utterly human. The poems in Amen are primarily short lyrics, lullabies, and laments, whose subjects revolve around the pain of longing and absence, the most haunting of human emotions….

[Travels of a Latter-day Benjamin of Tudela] consists of a series of fifty-six poems that have been simultaneously conceived of as a poetic autobiography and fiction. Benjamin of Tudela was a wandering rabbi of the Middle Ages who searched for lost or unknown Jewish communities. Like his historic namesake, this latter-day Benjamin has been profoundly influenced by his Jewish upbringing and environment, in which "My heart fasts nearly every week—whether I drop a scroll to the ground or not." Filled with opening and closing prayers, good and evil angels, and a God...