The Ladder [Paperback]

A smile like an eagle’s clawHAMUTAL BAR-YOSEF’s prizes include the Amichai Prize, the Jerusalem Prize for Poetry, the President of Israel Prize for Poetry. Her collection of poems, Night, Morning, was published by Sheep Meadow. ESTHER CAMERON is the editor of The Deronda Review.“I read—slowly, like sipping a strong liqueur—two or three poems each evening and marvel at the precision, the acuity, and the (rare) blend of warmth and irony.”“Hamutal Bar-Yosef writes passionately and wisely about the convergence of historical tragedy and personal suffering. “I am a poisoned well,” she declares in a prefatory poem, and then dives to the bottom of grief—the death of her brother in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, the suicide of a teenage son—and renders her losses movingly, without a trace of bathos or self-pity.”