Years I Walked at Your Side

Reviews / Votes

"One of the best poets writing in Hebrew today... [Geldman's poems are] multifaceted and multidimensional... a compelling intellectual challenge that blends existential sorrow with humorous charm." - Haaretz

"One of Geldman's poetic characteristics is the arc of his cultural associations and sensibilities, an arc that extends from East to West, and is quite rare in the Israeli literary landscape... The sensual and cultural richness, the fine musicality, the originality of observation, and the thematic singularity combine to make Geldman's work an important and beautiful treasure in contemporary Hebrew poetry." - Rina Litvin

"[Geldman's] reach is perhaps not surprising for a psychoanalyst confronted professionally and temperamentally with the inner as well as outer manifestations of human experience. Readers come away with an impression of the poet as uomo universale, a genuinely Renaissance personality, conversant with Greek mythology, world and Jewish history, Chinese culture, the fine arts, flora and fauna, and the expanses of literary imagination." - Stanley F. Chyet and Warren Bargad, No Sign of Ceasefire: An Anthology of Contemporary Israeli Poetry

"These are the poems of a wise man, incessantly plagued by epistemological questions." - Yedioth Ahronoth

"Mordechai Geldman's Years I Walked at Your Side... reveals a poet at the height of his creative powers, and places him among the great poets of Hebrew poetry. His poems are meditative, sensual, autobiographical; and always the sudden splash of color, surprising in its simplicity, and affecting us deeply." - Maariv

"Geldman is one of the very few Hebrew poets who have so boldly embraced the sensual while dealing with the materialistic notions of self and universe." - TimeOut

"Linguistically and rhythmically reserved, Geldman's poems achieve a fine balance between the emotional and experiencing self, and the philosophical/metaphysical meanings they invoke." - Moznaim

"Reading Geldman's Years I Walked at Your Side allows the reader to follow the great transformations in the work of one of our most important poets." - Israel Today

"Geldman creates a complete and coherent poetic universe, a kind of laboratory where the self investigates itself, its consciousness, and its dialectical relationship with the world. Geldman's poems are direct and uncompromising, taking on the large themes that have been central to philosophy and art from time immemorial." - Davar

"Geldman possesses remarkable linguistic and creative abilities. His poems exhibit beauty and depth, investigating the private self as well as the universal, while devoid of all prejudice or preconception. The clarity and virtuosity of his language, its musicality, grant a classicist dimension to his natural nonconformism, as he engages the darker corners of human existence." - Uzi Shavit