The Dove That Didn't Return: Poems

by Yael S. Hacohen

Overview

A poet and female commander in the Israeli Defense Forces creates an original perspective from the war-torn front lines of the Middle East conflict.

The Dove That Didn’t Return tackles the canon of war poetry, an almost exclusively male-penned body of poems. In the book, biblical stories, verses, and fragments are rewritten through the eyes of a female lieutenant in the Israeli Army. It is a contemporary poetics on the revelations of war from an Israeli perspective never before told—a woman, and a soldier at that.

This debut full-length collection follows upon the publication of her critically acclaimed chapbook, Between Sanctity and Sand, from Finishing Line Press. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781666407006
Publisher:	Holy Cow! Press
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	516 KB

About the Author

Yael S. Hacohen is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. She has received research/teaching fellowships from Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was an ‎NYU Veterans Workshop Fellow, International Editor at Washington Square Literary ‎Review, and Editor-in-Chief at Nine Lines Literary Review. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review, LIT, Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly Magazine, Colorado Review, and many more. ‎Hacohen published her chapbook Between Sanctity and Sand with Finishing Line Press in 2021. Hacohen served as a lieutenant in the 162nd Armored Division of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Yael S. Hacohen earned a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. She has received research/teaching fellowships from Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was an ‎NYU Veterans Workshop Fellow, International Editor at Washington Square Literary ‎Review, and Editor-in-Chief at Nine Lines Literary Review. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review, LIT, Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly Magazine, Colorado Review, and many more. ‎Hacohen published her chapbook Between Sanctity and Sand with Finishing Line Press in 2021. Hacohen served as a lieutenant in the 162nd Armored Division of the Israeli Defense Forces. She lives with her family in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Table of Contents

1. 3

Genesis 4

Between Sanctity and Sand 5

And Yet the Sea Isn’t Full 6

Shacharit 7

The First Time Rockets Fall in Tel Aviv 10

Ghetto Warsaw 11

My Flock 12

Pillar of Cloud 13

I pull the pin 15

Settlement 16

Go into Darkness 19

I Never Saw a Wild Thing Sorry for Itself 20

Find Her by the Fountain 21

The Dove That Didn’t Return 22

2. 24

Amos 3:5 25

Tefillat Ne’ilah 26

Tradition 27

Families of the Earth 28

Peace 29

An Eye For 30

It cannot tell a statement from the howling truth. 30

Moriah 31

The Taking of Jericho 32

The Great Achievement of the Six Day War 33

Ode to the Field 34

Designation 36

Goliath 37

Ghetto Warsaw 38

If I Forget You, Jerusalem 39

Chava 41

3

Chava’s Judgement 42

3. 43

Surging Waters Stood Up Like a Wall 45

Ironstone 46

Five Fathoms Deep 47

Ghetto Warshaw 49

Of Women in the Tent 50

What I Forgot from My Wars 51

I once stood 52

July in Nitzanim Training Base 55

Collapsed 56

Delilah 58

This Will Be Your Land (with its boundaries on every side) 59

The Great Achievement of the Yom Kippur War 60

The Western Wall 61

Exodus 62

Editorial Reviews

"Yael Hacohen’s The Dove That Didn’t Return is a transformative book. You may enter this collection thinking you know what it means to be a woman, a mother, a soldier, a witness. You may enter it thinking you know plenty about violence and loss, duty and commitment, tenderness and mercy. But you will leave this book with different wisdom. Hacohen’s unforgettable poems reckon with themes that reveal—above all, what it means to be human." —Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

"Sacred and profane, biblically infused yet utterly contemporary, Yael Hacohen's beautiful, harrowing, war-torn, and soulful lyrics leave me shaken and uplifted. The Dove That Didn't Return is timely and timeless."—Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel: A Poem and 100 Poems to Break Your Heart

Praise for Between Sanctity and Sand

"A quietude lives in Between Sanctity and Sand—through Yael Shoshana Hacohen's strong voice."—Yusef Komunyakaa

"An heir to Yehuda Amichai, Yael Hacohen is a young poet with an old soul, and her harrowing, war-torn lyrics bring something utterly fresh into American poetry—a shocked memory of military life, a desert consciousness that hovers between the sacred and the profane, and an awe-inspiring sense of poetry that is both ancient and new. This short book is a gem."--Edward Hirsch

From the Publisher