"My mother dreams in Arabic, I dream in Hebrew," Ronny Someck has said, "but sometimes, inside the Hebrew, I hear the sound track of a singer like Fairuz conducting a duet with Frank Sinatra or Elvis." Someck, who was born in Baghdad in 1951, came to Israel as an infant; he now lives in Ramat Gan with his wife Liora and daughter Shirlee. Someck's poems embrace the Hebrew of street gangs, Arab workers and the marginalized struggling to survive. His work can be erotic, comic and tragic — he is wide-eyed at the wonders of a tear and a tattoo, a snapshot, a bra and a scarecrow. To read his poetry is to ride a runaway horse.

Ronny Somek, born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1951, came to Israel as a very young child, and lived with his parents first in a transit camp for new immigrants. His education, he has said, was in the gap between the great Arab singers Umm Kulthum and Fairuz and Elvis and Billie Holiday. "I wasn't aware of any difference between the two cultures, " he says. "They seemed to me 'day and night.' For that reason, I feel as if I lived in a whirlpool, where it's extremely difficult to discern between 'eastern' and 'western' gusts of wind.' "Someck's Sephardi voice is rich with slang - it gives us the odor of falafel and schwarma, the army with its supporting cast of recruits and commandos, the bustle of southern Tel Aviv with its small garages, shops, cheap restaurants, its gangs and Arab workers. His poems can be hot, erotic, comic, tragic, agape at a tear and a tattoo, a snapshot and a bra. The sensations in hearing his work are of speed, danger, uncertainty. No wonder he is so beloved in Israel. In what other poet do we find Tarzan, Marilyn Monroe, and cowboys battling with Rabbi Yehuda Halevi for the hearts and souls of Israelis?

Wislawa Szymborska writes, " Reading Ronny Someck's fascinating work, I came upon 'Bliss, 'a poem that can serve as a wedding toast throughout the world":

A wedding cake with us on high
bride and groom, two dolls in the sky.
We fight to stay on the same slice
when the blade descends, by and by.