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There is some connexion (I like the way the English spell it They’re so clever about some things Probably smarter generally than we are Although there is supposed to be something We have that they don’'t—'don’t ask me What it is. . . .) —John Ashbery, “Tenth Symphony” Something We Have That They Don’t presents a variety of essays on the relationship between British and American poetry since 1925. The essays collected here all explore some aspect of the rich and complex history of Anglo-American poetic relations of the last seventy years. Since the dawn of Modernism poets either side of the Atlantic have frequently inspired each other’s developments, from Frost’s galvanizi...
The brilliant, mercurial, self-mythologising novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, author of the European 20th century masterpiece The Radetzky March, was an observer and chronicler of his times. Born and raised in Galicia on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his life's decline mirrored the collapse of civilised Europe: in his last peripatetic years, he was exiled from Germany, his wife driven into an asylum, and he died an alcoholic on the eve of the World War II. With keen insight, rigor and sensitivity, Keiron Pim delivers a visceral portrait of Roth's internal restlessness and search for belonging, from his childhood in the town of Brody to his Vienna years and his unsettled roaming of Europe. Exploring the role of Roth's absent father in his imaginings, and his attitude to his Jewishness, Roth's biography has particular relevance to us now, not only in the growing recognition and revival of his works, but also because his life's trajectory speaks powerfully to us in a time of uncertainty, fear, refugee crises and rising ethno-nationalism.
With five critically acclaimed collections—Nights in the Iron Hotel (1983), Acrimony (1986), K.S. in Lakeland: New and Selected Poems (1990), Corona, Corona (1993), and Approximately Nowhere (1999)—Michael Hofmann has established himself as one of the truly original poetic voices of our time. His poetry, both public and personal, expansive and intimate, looks in three directions—toward the Germany of his birth and toward his adopted homelands, England and America—and his perspective on all three is surprising, alarmed, and alarming. Influenced by Robert Lowell and John Berryman (both of whom he has edited), Hofmann nevertheless cannot be pigeonholed in any given style or movement. Hofmann may be better known, especially in America, for his acclaimed translations than for his own poetry, but this volume promises to introduce a broad new readership to a keenly intelligent, formally rigorous, emotionally unsparing poetry that feels entirely fresh.
For more than four decades, Michael Hofmann has made significant contributions to the literary cultures of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, ranging from his original poetry to translations of Kafka, Brecht, Hans Fallada, and Joseph Roth, among others. In the first book-length study of this iconic figure, poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely surveys Hofmann’s life and work with an emphasis on his poetry, situating him within the “New Generation” of writers, including Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, and Don Paterson, who rose to prominence in Britain between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. Reaffirming Hofmann’s central place in contemporary literature, Naffis...
This landmark collection of essays by one of the world's greatest living authors makes Durs Grünbein's wide-ranging and multifaceted prose available in English for the first time, and is a welcome complement to Ashes for Breakfast, his first book-length collection of poetry in English. Covering two decades, The Bars of Atlantis unfurls the entire breadth and depth of Grünbein's essayistic genius. Memoiristic and autobiographical pieces that introduce Grünbein, the man and the author, and tell the story of the making of a poet and thinker toward the end of a century marked by global political strife, unprecedented human suffering, long decades of totalitarian rule, and, in its final quarter, the dawn of a new, post–Cold War world order; essays that focus on Grünbein's major philosophical and aesthetic concerns, such as the intersection of art and science, literature and biology; extended reflections on the existential, cultural, political, and ethical import of the poet's craft in the contemporary world; and, finally, explorations of the meaning of classical antiquity for the present—all contribute to making.
"Introduction -- Identity and ideology -- The early novels: Das Spinnennetz, Hotel Savoy, Die Rebellion -- Radetzkymarsch as historical novel -- Die Kapuzinergruft and the confrontation with history -- Conclusion -- Selected works by Joseph Roth -- Works cited -- Index.
Michael Hofmann is renowned as one of our most brilliant critics and translators; that he is also regarded as among our most respected poets - 'one of the definitive bodies of work of the last half-century', TLS - is all the more impressive for his relatively concentrated output. One Lark, One Horse will be his fifth collection of poems since his debut in 1983, and his first since Approximately Nowhere in 1999. But it is also one of the most anticipated gatherings of new work in years. In style, it is as unmistakable as ever: sometimes funny, sometimes caustic; world-facing and yet intimate; and shows a bright mind burning fiercely over the European imagination. Approaching his sixtieth birthday, the poet explores where he finds himself, geographically and in life, treating with wit and compassion such universal themes as ageing and memory, place, and the difficulty for the individual to exist at all in an ever bigger and more bestial world. One Lark, One Horse is a remarkable assembly of work that will delight loyal readers and enchant new ones with its approachable, companionable voice.
Among the brilliant writers and thinkers who emerged from the multicultural and multilingual world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. For them, the trauma of World War I included the sudden loss of the geographical entity into which they had been born: in 1918, the empire was dissolved overnight, leaving Austria a small, fragile republic that would last only twenty years before being annexed by Hitler's Third Reich. In this major reconsideration of European modernism, Marjorie Perloff identifies and explores the aesthetic world that emerged from the rubble of Vienna and other former Habsburg territories—an "Austro-Modernism" that produce...