Full Description
Lutz Seiler grew up in the former East Germany and has lived most of his life outside Berlin. His poems, not surprisingly, are works of the border, the in-between, and the provincial, marked by whispers, weather, time's relentless passing, the dead and their ghosts. It is a contemporary poetry of landscape, fully aware of its literary and non-literary forebears, a walker's view of the place Seiler lives, anchored by close, unhurried attention to particulars. With his precise, memorable language—rendered here in compelling English—Seiler has pulled off a difficult feat: recontextualizing and radically personalizing the long tradition of German nature writing for the twenty-first century.
Contents
departure
there were parts of places, places
1. the new empire
2. there were parts of places, places
3. the rough tone
4. when you have the benefit of hindsight
5. sentry duty
6. in the evening
7. after the game
8. leftopenness
9. before the demolition
hand-wonder & diary
everything about me
harvest fest
culmitzsch
old garage questions
aranka, the name alone
the old company
suddenly auntie lanny
hand-wonder & diary
into the mark
into the mark
why, anteus, this place
the stay
october evening at the inflamed
do you see the red brick moon
chaussee
the trains
the glow of home
autumn
in the pipes
along i went, i froze
in field latin
beware
public news service
sixth january
along i went, i froze
what we see
wasn't that the way? indeed
early animal
what i possessed
as far as africa
bodmers vale
the photographer & his motif
darss poem
the river elbe near wilsnack
paternity
anecdote from the last war
to the sky
mylius street
exit sangerhausen—as if
footonauts
the footonauts
inventory
inventory
the very fast affection
may the south save us
end
whoever walks behind
come on mum make
night drive
hypnotized modern
as if
the scent of poems
the end will come in the stairwell
Notes
Translator's Acknowledgements
