Love & Selected Poems

Poetry, now available in paperback. "In his fusions of the sensual and the spiritual, the ordinary and the exalted, the sexual in the suffering psyche and the intelligent conciousness searching and spinning through history, myth and layers of language, Shabtai is one of the most exciting poets writing anywhere, and certainly the most audacious" (C.K. Williams). These poems, written between 1966 and 1995, juxtapose the personal with the universal and the everyday with the mythical in terse, expert observations: "I'll ready the offering: /myself/(I don't want myself except/to offer myself)//my blood is my fate/and my fate the deep//music of your voice" ("Love"). The result is a sacred and erotic poetry greater than the sum of its parts, one that "can be placed in a line that stretches from Biblical and Greek origins, to Catullus to Joyce to Jean Genet and other masters of language, revelry, and revelation" (Stanley Moss).