Review: The Immigrant's Lament by Mois Benarroch

[Jaime Lync]

The Immigrant’s Lament by Mois Benarroch is a collection of fifty-five poems that derives its name from the first poem in the book. Originally written and published in Hebrew in 1994, an English translation was released in 2016 by Moben Publishing (a Jerusalem-based publishing house). This is not surprising since Benarroch is a celebrated poet in Israel.

The longest poems in the book are The Immigrant’s Lament (26 pages) and Self portrait of the poet in a family mirror (18 pages). They are strategically placed as the first and last entries in the collection. Both poems can be regarded as either autobiographical pieces or very long winded poems. The Immigrant’s Lament (the poem) portrays the full range of emotions that the persona experienced when he had to leave his birthplace, Morocco, at the age of 12 to live in a strange land, Israel. Benarroch speaks about his current self in the third person in Self portrait of the poet in a family mirror. Unfortunately, the two poems suffered from many irrelevant lines obscuring the truly enjoyable ones.

On average, the rest poems take up only one page each. However, their subject matter and tone vary greatly. The main themes of the poems are romantic love, family ties, politics, injustice, war, culture and religion. My favourite poems are the humorous ones on love. I also appreciated the poems that advocated against war. There were a few poems that I did not enjoy because they seem to endorse things that are contrary to my faith (Christianity). Although I did not agree with all of the author’s conclusions I was impressed by the honesty that I sensed from his writing.

Chrys Brobbey concluded his official onlinebookclub.org review of this book by rating it 4 out of 4 stars for its clarity and lack of grammatical and editing flaws. He read the pdf version of this book. I, on the other hand, read the mobi.file version. My copy was riddled with grammatical and editorial flaws. There was more than one poem that had its title on a page by itself and the poem on another page. Some of the titles had word spacing issues. There were commas missing on most of the poems. Although this did not prevent me from understanding the poems, it did make it seem very unprofessional.

There was one poem that I initially thought was free of errors.However, under close examination it is really hard to miss mistakes like this one, ‘ poor it down like an orange juice/…poor it down, pour it until you have/ nothing left….’ Did you notice how poor is sometimes used in place of pour? Also, there was a poem with four lines that just happened to be the last four lines in a previous poem. I can’t decide if it was right or wrong for the author to include the short poem. Ironically, the name of the short poem is Right or wrong. Oh, and the short poem features this line, ‘I’m here to prouve you wrong.’ Once again, did you notice the spelling error? My copy of the book needs some serious editorial work.

I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. It was really hard to settle on what score to give this collection of poems. If I could, I would give The Immigrant’s Lament two and a half stars. I decided to round it down to two on account of the many grammatical and editorial flaws. However, I would still recommend this book to poets and avid poetry readers.

[bookowlie]

Great, thorough review! It's interesting that the other reviewer you mentioned cited a lack of errors in the book. Maybe they didn't notice the errors? It's one thing to not mention errors, but it's quite strange for the other member to specifically state there were no errors. It's possible the author loaded an incorrect, early draft for the version you read. I once reviewed a book that was in Kindle gift format, and it included editor's notes and highlighted corrections!

[kandscreeley]

It is interesting that one version had a lot of errors and one did not. I wonder what happened? Nevertheless, nice review! Thanks.

[Jaime Lync]

Great, thorough review! It's interesting that the other reviewer you mentioned cited a lack of errors in the book. Maybe they didn't notice the errors? It's one thing to not mention errors, but it's quite strange for the other member to specifically state there were no errors. It's possible the author loaded an incorrect, early draft for the version you read. I once reviewed a book that was in Kindle gift format, and it included editor's notes and highlighted corrections!

Thanks for the feedback Bookwolie. The errors in my mobi. file copy were really blatant. I can't attest for the pdf file that Chrys read. He also said that he only had 53 poems but mine had 55 (I counted more than once).

In your case maybe leaving in the editor's notes and the highlights is a new style. Lol. I'm just trying to look at things from a positive angle.

-- 18 May 2017, 11:23 --

It is interesting that one version had a lot of errors and one did not. I wonder what happened? Nevertheless, nice review! Thanks.

Thank you for the positive remarks. I've always wondered if having the book reviewed in different formats might cause something like this to happen. Now I know it's more than likely.

[Manang Muyang]

I have read two of Mois Benarroch's books and both contain his laments as an unhappy immigrant in Israel. I believe that, as a Sephardi, he is still experiencing discrimination to this day.

Benarroch is a multi-awarded poet and writer in Israel who writes in Hebrew and Spanish (and English, too.) Perhaps the errors occurred during the translations.

Thank you for the review. It helped me get to know Mois better. While I may not be able to read all of his books (they are heavy reading while I prefer the light reads), I sympathize with him and feel his loneliness.

[Jaime Lync]

I have read two of Mois Benarroch's books and both contain his laments as an unhappy immigrant in Israel. I believe that, as a Sephardi, he is still experiencing discrimination to this day.

Benarroch is a multi-awarded poet and writer in Israel who writes in Hebrew and Spanish (and English, too.) Perhaps the errors occurred during the translations.

Thank you for the review. It helped me get to know Mois better. While I may not be able to read all of his books (they are heavy reading while I prefer the light reads), I sympathize with him and feel his loneliness.

Thanks for the feedback Miriam. I too feel for Benarroch since I also lamented being a migrant from my homeland, Dominican Republic, to a smaller English speaking Caribbean island. Since Spanish is my mother tongue I felt really excluded in a school filled with all 'gibberish-speaking' people (that was my perspective when all the English I knew was Okay and No. )

[Flor26]

Great review. I don't read much poetry but I think I will like to read this. Thanks

[AuGold]

Interesting points you made in your review about this book. I am not much of a poetry reader and I don't think that this book is for me. Thanks

[Jaime Lync]

Thanks Flor and AuGold for your comments.

[General Doc]

Nice review. I like that you did your home-work; read other people's review and what's not.

[Jaime Lync]

Thanks Doc!

[John Cand]

I like poetry so this sounds worth the read. Thanks.

[Jaime Lync]

Thanks for reading John.