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The Stuff By Which We Live
Harry (Heinrich) Heine A quote here from Max Brod‘s biography of Harry (better known as Heinrich) Heine, Heine: The Artist in Revolt. It has about it the very strangeness that makes Heine, for me, more rewarding to read than the currently influential Friedrich Hölderlin: Now that I come to discuss [Heine’s] masterpieces it is no more than fitting that I should make due acknowledgment of the way in which he trampled over every inner and outer barrier and crushed all difficulties.Read More
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Poetry Makes Something Happen
Günter Grass at Home I suppose it’s appropriate that Poetry Month should witness the international furor created by the great German poet and novelist Günter Grass with his poem “What Must Be Said.” (So much for Auden and his assertion that “poetry makes nothing happen.”) There are now several translations of the poem available, each of which has something to recommend it; but this is my favorite as a whole, despite an awkward patch or two: WHAT MUST BE SAIDGünter Grass / Tr.Read More
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Laura Winter’s Abiding Attention
The line of American poetry that runs from Emily Dickinson to H.D. to Lorine Niedecker to Rae Armantrout is a vein of intensity and concentration that now must be seen to include an Oregon poet named Laura Winter. (I’ve named all women here, but the line I mean does include men, among them: George Oppen, Cid Corman, Robert Creeley, Ronald Johnson, and Carl Philips.) I received Winter’s latest collection Coming Here to Be Alone from the publisher, Ce Rosenow, who co-edited a recent selection of Cid Corman’s poetry with poet Bob Arnold.Read More
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The Naked Ginsberg
Andrew Shields, a follower of this blog, has some new translations of German poet Dieter M. Gräf on a rather amazing multilingual Web site called lyrikline. One Andrew recommends is “The Naked Ginsberg“—a poem that rediscovers Ginsberg through the smokescreen of post-9/11 New York City.Read More
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Against Exceptionalism
The Root of All Evil Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth and one way. —Friedrich Hölderlinfrom Hyperion and Selected Poems, trans.Read More