Over the course of my time at Stanford, I was lucky enough to work on 5 issues of Mantis—and to curate a range of special features, including selections of female poetry, west coast poetry, red state poetry, and poetry and protest. Through my work on Mantis I got to engage with the very thing that had brought me to Stanford in the first place—my love of poetry and passion for language—in a concrete way and with tangible results. What stands out for me now, looking back, is the very first feature I curated, “A Selection of Contemporary Hebrew poetry,” which appeared in Mantis 14 (2016). At the time, I was not yet certain about my dissertation topic and it often seemed to me that there was a real disconnect between the work I was doing and the work I wanted to be doing. In putting together this selection I got to connect with contemporary Israeli poets and with their translators, and that experience ultimately helped shape the direction of my scholarly research. The poets whose work we featured included, as I noted in my introduction, poems by “a Holocaust refugee and by the child of Holocaust survivors,” as well as by Mizrahi poets, and by an Israeli Arab poet. Re-reading these poems now, five years later, I’m struck again by Eli Eliahu’s “Even for just one night,” translated by Vivian Eden, a haunting, searingly beautiful reflection on love.

Shoshana’s Selection:

Eli Eliahu (translated by Vivian Eden) - Even for just one night