Being right may feel good, but what human price do we pay for this feeling of rightness? Yehuda Amichai’s poem “The Place Where We Are Right,” translated by Stephen Mitchell, asks us to answer this question, consider how doubt and love might expand and enrich our perspective, and reflect upon the buried and not-so-buried ruins of past conflicts, arguments, and wounds that still call for our attention.
Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet and novelist born in Würzburg, Germany, and he lived from 1924 to 2000. His poetry is collected in numerous works, including Open Closed Open, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, and The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai.
Stephen Mitchell is an author, poet, and translator. His works of translation include The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Gilgamesh, and Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Mitchell translated The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai with Chana Bloch.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
This is the sixth episode of "Poems as Teachers," a special seven-part miniseries on conflict and the human condition.
We’re pleased to offer Yehuda’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.