Ronny Someck is an enormously popular poet and radio host in Israel. Born in Iraq, he spent his childhood in a transit camp for new immigrants. This is his first full-length book to appear in English; his Sephardi voice is rich with slang, hot music, street gangsters and army commandos, and the odors of falafel and schwarma. In what other poet could we find Tarzan, Marilyn Monroe, and cowboys battling with Rabbi Yehuda Halevi for the hearts and souls of Israelis?

Ronny Someck’s eight books of poetry have been translated into twenty-two languages. Moshe Dor and Barbara Goldberg are award-winning authors and translators. Together they have edited The Stones Remember: Native Israeli Poetry and After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace.