The first time Israeli poet Ronny Someck sold a piece to a local literary publication, it appeared with his last name misspelled. Yet, instead of being upset over the byline mishap, Someck was relieved.
“I didn’t want my friends to know I wrote the poem,” recalled Someck, who, at the time, was more concerned with protecting his former image as a tough 16-year-old center on the Macabee basketball team. “Back then it was like I was two men living in the same body. One was this sensitive guy who wrote poetry…and the other this hard, macho basketball player,” said the now older, wiser and internationally known poet.
Someck was in the Bay Area Nov. 1-6 on a lecture tour as the first scholar-in-residence this year for the Israel Center of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s “Art and Politics” series.
Taking time out of his hectic schedule and speaking in a heavy Sephardi accent, Someck revealed that, decades later, he still remembers how ashamed he was to tell his friends about the big box full of poems he had written and kept safely stashed away in his room.
By the time his third poem was published, however, he had let the cat out of the bag, revealing his true identity as a budding young poet. His friends were surprisingly supportive. Off the basketball court they encouraged him. On court they would jokingly tease him if he blew a move, making jabs like, “Are you going to pass the ball or are you busy dreaming up a line?”
Since those awkward early teenage years, Someck’s accomplishments have been vast. Today he is one of Israel’s most celebrated poets. He is often referred to as a “young Yehuda Amichai,” who was, in fact, one of his early mentors. Best known for his recent work, “The Fire Stays in Red,” Someck is the author of eight books of poetry, one of which is a children’s book he wrote with his 11-year-old daughter.
Born in Baghdad in 1951, he was uprooted from his native Iraq when he was 4 and transplanted to Israel, where he spent his childhood in a transit camp for new immigrants. There he was surrounded and influenced by music, including that of Umm Kulthum, Farid al-Atrash and Fairuz.
His poems are rich in slang and distinguished by staccato rhythms and disturbing segues ripe with the sensations of speed, danger and uncertainty. Critics have said, “To read his poetry is to ride a runaway horse.”
His distinct Sephardi voice invokes the odors of falafel and shwarma, the army with its supporting cast of recruits and commandos, the bustle of his home in Tel Aviv with its small garages, shops, cheap restaurants, its gangs and Arab workers. And his poems on love are not your typical romantic ballads. Instead they are at once erotic, comic and tragic — agape at the wonders of a tear and a snapshot, or a bra and a scarecrow.
Someck’s work has taken him on readings and tours around the country, from New York to Russia, Australia and Europe.
The highlight of Someck’s local scholar-in-residence tour was an evening of poetry and music on Nov. 6 with New York-based multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp, who played the saxophone and guitar, at A Traveling Jewish Theatre in San Francisco. “It was like a tango of words and music,” said Someck, who has performed and recorded three CDs with Sharp in the past. Together, at the premiere event, they joined forces, blending influences, cultures, languages and musical styles.
Calling the situation in Israel “very tough,” Someck said it has affected his work, but not necessarily in a conscious way. “It’s not a different part of my life. It’s the reality of what I live,” he explained, adding, “[For me] there are no borders between life and poetry.”
Someck said he feels fortunate to be able to make a living as a poet and quoted the late philosophical novelist Jean-Paul Sartre who said that if you write poetry at age 16 you’re just someone who writes poems. At age 30, if you’re still writing them, you’re a poet.
“In my life, I waited many times to become a poet…It’s like a Cinderella story,” he said.
“In Answer to Your Question: When Did Your Peace Begin?”
Ben Gurion’s wind teased hair hung
on the wall of the cafe near the transit camp
and next to it, in a frame just like it,
the doughnut face of Umm Kulthoum.
That was in ’55 or ’56 and I figured if
a man and a woman hung side by side like that
they had to be bride and groom.
“A Poem of Bliss”
We are placed on a wedding cake
like the two dolls, bride and groom.
When the knife strikes
We’ll try to stay on the same slice.