Written in Pencil on a Sealed Box-Car

Poet Dan Pagis was born in Romania and was sent to a concentration camp during his childhood. He immigrated to Israel in 1946 and joined Kibbutz Merḥavyah. A professor of medieval Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, Pagis published several collections of poetry, as well as works for children. Not until 1970, however, did Pagis begin to address the Holocaust in poems that established a new poetics of indirection. In 1973, he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize.