Heaven
and Other Poems
by Israel Horovitz

$15.95

Description

With more than seventy produced plays and many produced screenplays, playwright/director/author Israel Horovitz presents a new dimension to his creative output in Heaven and Other Poems, his first-ever authorized poetry collection. A tour-de-force of emotion, empathy and deep, melancholic beauty, Heaven and Other Poems is a stunning collection of work crafted over a lifetime. From the epic poem “Stations of the Cross” with its startling, tenderly crafted images of familial love and loss, to the punchy and pointed aphorisms of the twin “Defining the French Novel” and “Defining the American Novel” Horovitz displays a remarkable range, and—throughout—a deep understanding of humanity. As the most-produced American playwright in French theatre history, many of his poems naturally are set in France, where Horovitz often directs French-language productions of his plays. The collection is filled with surprises and special gifts, such as the never-before-published translation of one of his poems by master playwright Samuel Beckett, from whom Horovitz found thematic and stylistic inspiration for his own work. A truly inspired poetry collection, which is, in turn, truly inspiring and fulfilling to its audience.

Heaven and Other Poems by Israel Horovitz
ISBN: 978-1-941110-11-9 Trade Paperback; ISBN: 978-1-941110-12-6 Ebook
112 pages; $15.95
Publication date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014

For wholesale and trade orders, please visit our distributor PGW.

Praise for Heaven and Other Poems by Israel Horovitz

“Israel Horovitz is now one of a bare handful of playwrights, along with Tennessee Williams, Beckett, and a couple of Elizabethans, who can write first-rate poetry in English. These poems are not merely good for a man who happens to be a world-class playwright; they’re poems that make our lives larger than they would be without them.” —Russell Banks, New York Times Bestselling Author of Rule of the Bone and The Sweet Hereafter

“For 48 years I have known and enjoyed Israel’s plays, so it is no surprise that he is a really great poet at heart.” —Michael Douglas, Academy Award-winning actor (Wall Street)

“Sometimes the best of writers express themselves beyond their identifiable disciplines, and now the renowned playwright, Isreal Horowitz, exhibits his remarkable way with words in his first book of poetry.” —Gay Talese, New York Times Bestselling Author of A Writer’s Life and Honor Thy Father

“Israel Horovitz loves language like most of us love oxygen. Words spill out of him and pile up in his work like beautiful mounds of rubble. never easy. never silly. Always tough, meaningful, funny, tragic and true. He makes me laugh and smile and think (and that is the rarest feat of all). He teaches me with every sentence and makes me happy to be alive and i know no greater compliment than that. HEAVEN AND OTHER POEMS is a collective sigh, the work of a master writer and a hopeful man–perhaps the last among us to still believe in the redemptive powers  of both love and art.” —Neil LaBute, director/screenwriter of Some Velvet Morning, The Wicker Men

“The poetry in this collection is variously political, personal, passionate, funny, nostalgic, elegiac, verbally playful, and unsparingly honest. Wordsworth said of the sonnet: ‘with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.’ The same can be said of the poems of Israel Horovitz.” —Kevin Kline, Oscar-winning actor; A Fish Called Wanda

“In this collection Horovitz gives a powerful bone to marrow account of his life as a man and world class artist. He encompasses so much: the brooding poet, a walker in the city, another member of another lost generation in Paris, the wanderlust of a wandering Jew, the older lover, and the man in his 70s with the specter of death over his shoulder.” —Doug Holder, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Forecast Magazine recently ran a full-page interview of Israel Horovitz by award-winning author Russell Banks. To download the interview, click here October_2014_ThreeRooms_Forecast.

“Horovitz is truly a renaissance man, so it makes perfect sense that he’s as adept with verse as he is with stage direction and dialogue.” —Jordan Foster, BookTrib

“This poetry collection should delight the lover of verse, and those averse to poetry. Horovitz writes accessible, earthy, and mainly short poems that charm and beguile. . . Fans of the poet’s famous rapper son, Ad-Rock (a.k.a. Adam Horovitz), of the Beastie Boys, might want to see what the old man’s up to.” —American Jewish World

“The poems . . . display erudition, bilingual fluency, celebrity cadre, and panache. Horovitz charms throughout this memoir-in-poetry.” —The Rumpus

“Serious autobiographical pieces . . ” —Publishers Weekly


About Israel Horovitz

Israel Horovitz

Israel Horovitz

Playwright-screenwriter-director Israel Horovitz’s seventy stage-plays have been translated and performed in as many as thirty languages, worldwide. His plays have introduced such actors as Al Pacino, John Cazale, Jill Clayburgh, Marsha Mason, Gerard Depardieu, and many others. Best-known plays include Line (now in its fortieth year, off-Broadway), The Indian Wants the Bronx, Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, My Old Lady, The Widow’s Blind Date, It’s Called the Sugar Plum, Rats, Morning, and The Primary English Class. Best-known films include Author! Author!, Sunshine (for which he won the European Academy Award–Best Screenplay), James Dean (which introduced James Franco), 3 Weeks After Paradise (which he wrote, directed and starred in), and My Old Lady, which he recently adapted for the screen, and directed, starring Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, and Kristin Scott-Thomas. Horovitz’s memoires Un New-Yorkais a Paris were recently published in France, where he was decorated as Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and is the most-produced American playwright in French theater history. Heaven and Other Poems is the first collection of his poetry he has authorized for publication.

More information is available on his website www.israelhorovitz.com.

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