SOURCE: "Snap Judgments," in Poetry, Vol. CXVI, No. 2, May 1970, pp. 120-25.

In the following review, Sullivan praises Assia Gutmann's translations of Amichai's work.

The poems by Yehuda Amichai in Poems have been translated from the Hebrew by Assia Gutmann. Since I do not know Hebrew and since, even if I did, the text is not bilingual, my reactions to Amichai's poems are based solely on these often brilliant translations. Michael Hamburger admits to a similar problem in his Introduction:

Poems are made of words, and I cannot read the words of which Yehuda Amichai's poems are made, cannot follow—let alone judge—his way with the Hebrew language, what he does with its ancient and modern, literary and vernacular components, how he combines and contrasts them to make them talk or sing as they have never talked or sung before.

I wonder why someone who knows Hebrew wasn't...