Nathan Zach

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Nathan Zach, an Israeli poet, was born 1930 in Berlin, Germany, to a German father and an Italian mother. He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1936 and served in the IDF during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

In 1955, he published his first collection of poetry (Shirim Rishonim, Hebrew: שירים ראשונים‎), and also translated numerous German plays for the Hebrew stage.^[1]

Zach immigrated to Haifa as a child. At the vanguard of a group of poets who began to publish after Israel's establishment, Zach has had a great influence on the development of modern Hebrew poetry as editor and critic, as well as translator and poet. Zach has been one of the most important innovators in Hebrew poetry since the 1950s and he is well known in Israel also for his outstanding translations of the poetry of Else Lasker-Schüler and Allen Ginsberg.

From 1960 to 1967, Zach lectured in several institutes of higher education both in Tel Aviv and Haifa. From 1968 to 1979 he lived in England and completed his PhD at the University of Essex. After returning to Israel, he lectured at Tel Aviv University and was appointed professor at Haifa University. He has been chairman of the repertoire board of both the Ohel and Cameri theaters.

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Zach's search for a non-symbolic, explicit poetic language was a conscious break with tradition. Zach uses the surrealist tradition in an original manner and his poetry struggles against every sort of false expression. Guided by his desire for openness and experimentation, Zach avoids sentimentality and ideological modes in favor of bare emotions and brevity of expression. He rejects lyrical, formalized language, employing a colloquial vocabulary and an ironic and anti-romantic tone. Internationally acclaimed, Zach has been called "the most articulate and insistent spokesman of the modernist movement in Hebrew poetry."^{[citation needed]} He is one of the best known Israeli poets abroad and has been awarded the Bialik and Israel Prizes as well as the Feronia Prize (Rome).