The Last of the Lord's Poets

The book The Last of the Lord's Poets deals with the beginning of Modern Religious Poetry in the land of Israel as it was reflected in the early work of Yosef Zvi Rimon (1889-1958), with the many turbulent upheavals the old and new Jewish settlement went through, as a background. Unlike other poetries, religious and semi-religious, which dealt many times in religious issues in-order to deal with personal or public issues, Rimon's Poetry focused on God, the search for him and the rebellion against him.Rimon's God was not a universal God, Deistic or the God of the supreme. Rimon dedicated his life and his literature, according to his own observation, to the God of Israel, the unique Historic Jewish people's God, with all of his cultural national symbols, according to his standing in the religious tradition.Rimon's poetry is based, similarly to all major religious poetry, on varied texts, many times from distant historical linguistic facets. Rimon used biblical texts, Talmud, Midrash, Medieval Jewish philosophy and poetry, Kabala, Hasidism and modern language and literature. The use of these texts is not external or random, but an educated use by a person who knew these literatures inside and out and dealt with them as if they were holly script. Therefore one should be patient while reading, and the rewards will follow. This kind of poetry requires time in-order to reveal, facet upon facet, the entirety of the meanings hidden within it. Reading Rimon's poems can be compared to time travel, in which the reader discovers hidden worlds, delt by lovingly and fearfully by whole generations until they were intertwined together by the poet in his poems.