[Yehuda Amichai] lives in history as a fish does in water…. [In Time the] theme of dislocation, of places wiped out behind him, while remaining nominal, haunts the verses of Amichai, who has been witness to the same kind of dispersal and replacement during all the days of his exile. As he says in one of his poems, "and since then the town / and since then the whole world."…

[Amichai] writes lyrics in Biblical cadences. Reading them, we may remember that Hebrew, largely the language of the Old Testament, is the ultimate source of what we admire as "free verse." By a miracle of continuity and empathy, the several translators of the vintage Bibles infused English with the tropes and cadences of the Hebrew and the Aramaic tongue. Hence it may be no surprise to discover that an Amichai poem is alive to the ear and never reads...