Natan Zach was born in 1930 in Berlin, and he immigrated to Haifa in 1936. He has had a great influence on the development of modern Hebrew poetry as editor and critic, as well as translator and poet. In an article from 1959, Zach favored ‘a “poetics of modesty”: simplicity in theme, syntax, and diction; understated rhetoric, avoidance of symbolistic intricacy, and flexible rhyme patterns; metrical and rhythmic structures that follow and reflect the flow of conversational language, refraining from lofty, elevated, cerebral, and flashy poetic devices and structures while employing irony in a subtle, distilled fashion; in short, an appealingly simple poetics without undue simplification.
