Book excerpt: "Vulture in a cage," Solomon Ibn Gabirol's own self-description, is an apt image for a poet who was obsessed with the impediments posed by the body and the material world to the realization of his spiritual ambition of elevating his soul to the empyrean. Ibn Gabirol's poetry is enormously influential, laying the groundwork for generations of Hebrew poets who follow him--rocky and harsh, full of original imagery and barbed wit, and yet no one surpassed him for the limpid beauty of his devotional verse. His poetry is at once a record of the inner life of a tormented poet and a monument to the Judeo-Arabic culture that produced him. This book contains the most extensive collection of Ibn Gabirol's poetry ever published in English.