The Queen Came to the King

This lavishly-produced collection of poems contains bizarre moments and eccentric characters of the sort that fascinate small children. Poems like “When I was a Dot,” or “The Cat’s Yawn,” give a microscopic view of very marginal events. A swatch of color or the swish of a tail is magnified, telling a whole story in a moment. The title poem, “When the Queen Came to the King, tells of the Queen who suggests that the King let her come into his dreams. “Silly fool,” she calls him when he is not interested in her company. “The Man who Talks to Himself” is less about the character of the man than about the child’s view of adults considered strange by other adults. In “The Meeting of the Palms” Zarchi focuses on a fleeting encounter that possibly never happened, something that would only take place when a small child is the observer.

This milestone collection contains the best of Nurit Zarchi’s short poems which dwell on the smallest details of sights, sounds, smells and momentary communication between people, animals or objects. She illuminates the way in which the very young can be enthralled by seemingly insignificant events.