ABSTRACT
Yehuda Amichai and Natan Zach are two prominent poets who transported Hebrew poetry from one genotype to another. These poets were younger than Amichai, although it was with them that he first appeared on the literary stage and in their literary journal, Likrat. The initial poems of the dor baaretz were published in the mid-1940s, five years before Amichai's first poems were published, and they remained loyal to the previous generation's rhymeschemes, rhythms and diction. Poetry remained on the margins, and until it hit upon new paths in the poetry of Pinchas Sadeh, Yehuda Amichai, Natan Zach, David Avidan, and Dalia Rabikovitz, as well as Israel Pinchas and others, it failed to regain its seat of honour in the literary arena. Amichai's poem is important in that it was written in complete identification with the left-wing political consensus, although he, like many others, began drifting away from this trend in the mid-1950s.
