SOURCE: Abramson, Glenda. “The Love Poetry of Yehuda Amichai.” American Journal of Semiotics 11, No. 2 (Fall, 1986): 221-47.

In the following essay, Abramson discusses the theme of love in Amichai's poetry.

If Yehuda Amichai does not use as topics for his work all three of those that Dante considered fundamental to poetry, salus, venus, and virtus, the second, venus, appears as a pervasive theme, perhaps the most pervasive throughout his work, revealing a consistency of idea which has unfailingly moved through the structured verse of the early volumes to the less tersely conceived poems of later years. One of the primary topics of his poetry is the alteration of love within a variety of contexts: time, war, youth and maturity, memory and religion. Love is the framework in which most of the events of the poetry take place, and it is itself celebrated or mourned in a number of long...