War Surrounds Us Poems

This chapbook by Michael Dickel, chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English, collects poems written during and in response to the Israel-Gaza war in the summer of 2014. The poems come from a personal perspective that resists accepting the violence and observes the effects on family and daily life from the provocations before through the devastating loss of human life during attacks on Gaza and past the line of failed cease fires that eventually arrives at one that holds for the time being, as fall arrives. The incongruence of life going on as war rages so close, and the need to see and reach out to the humanity of the Other come through these poems as the poet watches his young son’s response and considers the question of the future we want versus the one that seems to be coming.”Michael Dickel’s new book is an explosive tour de force. From Breaking News to all that shivers beneath the surface, it takes us on a visceral ride as the rockets are falling through screaming surfaces, tunnels cease fires and death tolls; rocketing all night through missiles, mortars, sensors, sirens, shadows and eclipses, shelters and hope. As night slopes through shivers of light, War Surrounds Us will rocket your world with an escalation of unprecedented gravity.” — Adeena Karasick