I and Not an Angel. Selected poems of Eli Eliahu includes sixty-four poems translated from the Hebrew and selected from three volumes: I and not an Angel (2008), City and Fears (2011), and Epistles to the Children (2018) for which Eliahu has been awarded Israel's most prestigious prizes. Eli Eliahu, an Iraqi-Israeli poet, refuses the Israeli racial binary of Mizrahi (Israelis from Arab-speaking countries) and the culturally dominant Ashkenazi (from European countries) by making all poets Babylonian. Such a move befits the son of two Iraqi immigrants who descend from one of the most historically significant communities in the Jewish world. For Babylon (in modern-day Iraq) plays an oversized role in producing the scribes and prophets-Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Ezra-as well as the material of prophecy itself.

Eliahu's are some of the only Hebrew-language poems about early fatherhood and early childhood. Eliahu inquires into Israeli's relationship to its minority populations and its neighbors, with poems about military service, Arab labor, and the use of the media to serve a dominant historical narrative. These poems champion the weak and voiceless.

Translator Marcela Sulak provides a generous, contextualizing introduction, as well as a chapter detailing her treatment of the main concerns of translating these seemingly simple, sparse poems which, at the same time, contain enormous cultural and linguistic layers. This collection is relevant to literary translators, as well as students of Hebrew and lovers of Israeli literature, poetry, minority literatures, and others.