Her Booklet is Always in My Bag

Poems in Memory of Leah Goldberg

Abstract

The article addresses three cycles of poems written in memory of the poetess Leah Goldberg after her death (by Yehuda Amichai, T. Carmi, and Tuvia Rübner). By reading these poems, I aimed to trace Goldberg’s image as a “poet-mother” of several poets of the (1950's). This claim challenges the accepted historiographical descriptions of the rebellion of the Generation of the State's poets in the generation of Alterman-Shlonsky, and focus, instead, on the continuity between Goldberg's poetry and that of the poets of the "Young Guard", as well as what is perceived as "women's poetry" and "men's poetry". This relates, among other things, to the basic modernistic tendency to regard the "Courage for Hulin” as a poetic worldview beginning with Goldberg, as well as to the central role of the gaze and a longing for the “old, European home” embedded deeply in Goldberg’s poetry, but which is also clearly presented in the works of such significant "Eretz-Israeli" poets as Yehuda Amichai.