Eyes, Stones

Book excerpt: In this debut collection, Eyes, Stones, Elana Bell brings her heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The poems invoke characters inexorably linked to the land of Israel and Palestine. There is Zosha, a sharp-witted survivor whose burning hope for a Jewish homeland helps her endure the atrocities of the Holocaust. And there is Amal, a Palestinian whose family has worked their land for over one hundred years -- through Turkish, British, Jordanian, and now Israeli rule. Other poems -- inspired by interviews conducted by the poet in Israel, the Palestinian territories, and America -- examine Jewish and Arab relationships to the land as biblical home, Zionist dream, modern state, and occupied territory.