In Peter Cole's remarkable new book, Things on Which I've Stumbled, the forces and sources that have long driven his work come together in singular fashion. Plumbing the past as it soars in the present, the collection rides a variable music that takes it from an archeology of mysterious poetic fragments unearthed in a medieval Egyptian synagogue to lyrics suffused with a "normal mysticism" and poignant political commentary on the blighted hills surrounding modern Jerusalem.

"One of very few writers to achieve enduring fame as a translator, [Cole] looks at the long, international history of Jewish literature, the modern enterprise of translation, the troubled contexts of his Middle East, as well as marital love.… Anyone with any interest in Cole's topics will cherish this admirable book." –Publishers Weekly

"A major poet-translator" –Harold Bloom

"Peter Cole is a true maker" –Edward Hirsch

EXCERPT: "Improvisation on Lines by Isaac the Blind," from Things On Which I've Stumbled

Only by sucking, not by knowing,
can the subtle essence be conveyed—                  
sap of the word and the world’s flowing

that raises the scent of the almond blossoming,                         
and yellows the bulbul in the olive’s jade.
Only by sucking, not by knowing.

The grass and oxalis by the pines growing
are luminous in us—petal and blade—
as sap of the word and the world’s flowing;

a flicker rising from embers glowing;                      
light trapped in the tree’s sweet braid                                    
of what it was sucking.  Not by knowing                               

is the amber honey of persimmon drawn in.  
An anemone piercing the clover persuades me—          
sap of the word and the world is flowing

across separation, through wisdom’s bestowing,                      
and in that persuasion choices are made:                                   
But only by sucking, not by knowing                               
that sap of the word through the world is flowing.