Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited

About this book

In the passed-out light of night
when body
melts into flesh
letters break out of us
& gaps are fired into the poem.

Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited catapults us into the frenetic spiral of Yakir Ben-Moshe’s dating life. Against the backdrop of war and trauma that permeates Israeli society, the round dance of lovers takes on a timeless quality. The passionate vows and furious arguments between Ben-Moshe and his girlfriends, their breakups and lovemaking in sweltering and noisy Tel Aviv, are respite from and mirror of the breathlessness of day-to-day life in a country whose citizens constantly expect the unexpected. Their longing for simplicity and clamoring for attention, their wit and cynicism all become tangible in Dan Alter’s brilliant, playful, and vibrant translation.

Yakir Ben-Moshe’s poetry has an unstoppable energy that only few contemporary poets, anywhere, possess. How can I claim this, without knowing his native Hebrew? This is one of those special cases when poetry is, in fact, found in translation. What gets through to us, in these beautiful renderings by Dan Alter, is terrific use of tone, which is delivered in English that manages to be both clear and textured, memorably direct and yet intriguing. Open this book on any page. What will you see? The lover calls. Then visits with a box of tissues. Meanwhile, outside the horizon is spread open like a photo album hung upside down. One eyelash drops from the sky. What do you learn? You learn that in this absurd place some call time we live together with this strange gift some call wonder. And I, for one, am grateful to Dan Alter for reminding us of that, via his marvelous translations of Ben-Moshe that indeed read like first-rate poetry in English.
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

“Finally I broke up with Elinor because of Hamas,” exclaims Yakir Ben-Moshe, in a Tel Aviv where the specter of death hums constantly in the background, along with Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven, and also a bevy of cats. Where a string of girlfriend muses delivers earthy, sometimes hilarious, often on-point critiques about Yakir’s poetry, life, or qualities as a human being or boyfriend. I love how Dan Alter’s faithful translations render speech with its heart still beating and its hands still sweaty. I can almost feel Ben-Moshe’s breath against my cheek.
—Marcela Sulak, author of The Fault and National Jewish Book Awards finalist, City of Sky Papers

Yakir Ben-Moshe is a rare contemporary voice in Hebrew poetry. Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited achieves the seemingly impossible, dancing lightly across the politically, historically, and socially burdensome terrain of Israeli daily life. Ben Moshe’s poems remind us of the absurdity of violence and the deep-rooted force of life that struggles to find expression. Ben Moshe’s Hebrew is playful, witty, and incisive, and Dan Alter’s beautiful translation brings this tightrope walk of levity and weight to vibrant life in English.
—Yael Segalovitz, author of How Close Reading Made Us