Poetry

Edited by Charlotte Lee A greatest-hits selection from some of the most popular poets of the Romantic movement, including Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, and Heine, in a gorgeously jacketed small hardcover. Unlike the more earnest English Romantic poets, followers of the Romantic movement in Germany valued wit and humor along with beauty. Admiration for nature is also prominent in their poetry, and in particular the dramatic forests which still cover large areas of Germany. Love and death crop up repeatedly as themes in such famous works as Goethe’s “Elf King” and Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Characters from myth and folklore abound—most famously Lorelei, an enchantress who is associated with the rock of the same name on the bank of the Rhine, who is featured in several poems in this volume. Also gathered here are such favorites as Hölderlin’s “Bread and Wine,” Schiller’s “The Visit of the Gods,” Eichendorff’s “Nocturne,” and Heine’s “The Magic Month of May,” along with works by the most famous women writers of the Romantic era, including Karoline von Günderrode and Sophie Mereau.Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.Hardcover256 pagesEveryman's Library, 20244.125 x 6.25 inchesISBN 9781101908358Poetry, Classics, German Romanticism

German Romantic Poets

By Rainer Maria Rilke Edited by Peter Washington Translated by J.B. Leishman The Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rilke contains poems from The Book of Images; New Poems; Requiem for a Friend; Poems, 1906-1926; French Poems; The Life of Mary; Sonnets to Orpheus; The Duino Elegies; Letters to a Young Poet; and an index of first lines.Hardcover256 pagesEveryman's Library, 19964.1 x 6.25 InchesISBN 9780679450986Poetry, Literature

Rilke: Poems (Everyman's Library)

Edited by Emily Fragos Art and Artists: Poems is a sumptuous collection of visions in verse—the work of centuries of poets who have used their own art form to illuminate art created by others.A wide variety of visual art forms have inspired great poetry, from painting, sculpture, and photography to tapestry, folk art, and calligraphy. Included here are poems that celebrate Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, and Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Here are such well-known poems as John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” Homer’s immortal account of the forging of the shield of Achilles, and Federico García Lorca’s breathtaking ode to the surreal paintings of Salvador Dalí. Allen Ginsberg writes about Cezanne, Anne Sexton about van Gogh, Billy Collins about Hieronymus Bosch, and Kevin Young about Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here too are poems that take on the artists themselves, from Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. Altogether, this brilliantly curated anthology proves that a picture can be worth a thousand words—or a few very well-chosen ones.Hardcover256 pagesRandom House, 20124.4 x 6.48 inchesISBN 9780307959386 Poetry, Anthology

Art and Artists: Poems (Everyman's Pocket Poet Series)

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Jessie LemontDuring three feverish weeks in 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke composed the 55 sonnets that constitute Sonnets to Orpheus. Inspired by the death of a friend's daughter, the poet felt that he was being compelled to write by the girl's ghost. At about the same time he also completed Duino Elegies, which he had begun ten years earlier. Intimately connected to the Sonnets in themes and sensibilities, the Elegies offer meditations on love, death, God, and life's meaning that express Rilke's irresolvable conflict between a longing for solitude and a painful loneliness.Although his poetry was recognized and admired by leading European artists, the Austro-Bohemian poet was virtually unknown during his lifetime, achieving international acclaim only with these final masterpieces. This edition presents translations by Jessie Lemont, praised by London's Times Literary Supplement for their presentation of Rilke as "a writer of short individual lyrics, often of incomparable, impressionist vividness, plastic vitality and symbolic suggestiveness." Reprint of The Fine Editions Press, New York, 1945 edition.Paperback112 pagesDover Publications, 20205 x 8 inchesISBN 9780486838670Literature, Classic

Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies (Dover Thrift Editions)

This book was featured as part of our Literatur Café series. By Ulrich Baer Honorable Mention in the 2001 Harry Levin Prize, sponsored by the American Comparative Literature Association."This innovative study of the works of Baudelaire and Celan opens a new window on the history of modern identity in western culture."—Germanic Notes and ReviewsIn a bold reassessment, this book analyzes the works of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan, two poets who frame our sense of modern poetry and define the beginning and end of modernity itself.The two poets share a feature that seems to block their placement in such an easy chronological or historical scheme: each accounts for an experience that will not fully enter memory, but dissipates in the mind in the form of trauma, fragments, and shock. While Baudelaire, as Paul Valéry was the first to show, explores the trauma of the minute personal shocks of everyday existence in modern life, Celan engages with the catastrophic magnitude of the Holocaust and how it has altered our understanding of history. Can we relate the shocks registered in Baudelaire's poems to the historical horror addressed in Celan's work without denying either the singularity of suffering and loss or the uniqueness of the historical event of the Shoah?Drawing on trauma studies and Holocaust research, Remnants of Song challenges existing interpretations of Baudelaire and Celan by constantly holding in view both the aesthetic dimension of their works and their historical import. The author demonstrates that the act of engaging with a poem on its own terms may serve as an important model for an ethical response to the radical experiences of trauma. Answering Adorno's famous dictum that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz, he shows that Celan's poetry continues to posit its own truth by drawing on Baudelaire as a precedent—yet it does so in ways that have little to do with conventional understandings of history.Hardcover360 pagesStanford University Press, 20005.5 x 8.5 inches ISBN 9780804738262Literary Criticism

Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan

This book was featured as part of our Literatur Café series. By Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Ulrich Baer “It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will one distant day simply live your way into the answer.” In this slim collection of ten letters, written to an aspiring poet in the early 1900s, Rilke speaks with his unique insistence about living your true, authentic life. Countless readers have found inspiration, wisdom, and guidance in these deeply personal letters now famous the world over. Paperback100 pagesWarbler Press, 2022Originally published in 19295 x 8 inchesISBN 9781959891116Literature

Letters to a Young Poet

By Friedrich Nietzsche Edited and translated by Ulrich Baer Friedrich Nietzsche presented many of his greatest insights in pithy, well-turned short phrases that do not follow any philosophical dogma. Instead, his chastening but ultimately life-affirming philosophy puts forth true love and friendship as our best hope in dark times. Here are Nietzsche’s key sayings about love from the vast body of his philosophical writings, which have influenced politics, philosophy, art and culture like few other works of world literature. As the first edition of its kind, this collection presents Nietzsche’s thoughts on love not as academic philosophy but as a guide to life. At turns delightful and astute—and always wise—Nietzsche on Love offers an original and startling glimpse into what one of the world’s foremost thinkers says about the fundamental experience of our lives. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar. One of the greatest thinkers of all time, his ideas have exerted an immeasurable influence on philosophy, politics, art, literature, psychology, and popular culture around the world.Paperback 138 pages Warbler Press, 20205.06 x 0.35 x 7.81 inchesISBN 9781734452570Poetry, Letters

Nietzsche on Love

By Rainer Maria RilkeForeword by Damion SearlsTranslated from the German by M.D. Herter NortonA gorgeous edition of one of the most beloved classics of the twentieth century, published in celebration of W. W. Norton’s 100th anniversary. This slim volume of letters from the poet and mystic, Rainer Maria Rilke, to a nineteen-year-old cadet and aspiring poet named Franz Xaver Kappus, has touched millions of readers since it was first published in English in 1934. The translator, Mary Dows Herter Norton—a polymath extraordinaire with expertise in music, literature, and science, and who, along with her husband, William Warder Norton, founded the company that bears his name—played a crucial role in elevating Rilke’s reputation in the English-speaking world. This Norton Centenary Edition commemorates Norton, known as “Polly” to friends and colleagues, and the 100th anniversary of the publishing company she co-founded. An admiring foreword by Damion Searls—himself a recent translator of Rilke’s Letters—celebrates Polly’s stylistic achievement, and an afterword by Norton’s President, Julia A. Reidhead, honors her commitment to maintaining W. W. Norton & Company’s independence. This handsome new edition of a beloved classic brings Rilke’s enduring wisdom about life, love, and art to a new generation, in the translation that first introduced him to the English-speaking world.Hardcover160 pagesW.W. Norton & Company, 20235.8 x 0.6 x 8.6ISBN 9781324050728Letters

Letters to a Young Poet (The Norton Centenary Edition)

Original Price: $15.95 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Tyler Mills "In City Scattered, through gorgeous strands of speech, Tyler Mills perceptively reintegrates our sacred, forgotten past into a portrait of a woman whose self-possession and complexity are palpably rendered. Only a poet with such sensitivities of language can so clearly hear and interpret the immortal silence of history; only a poet attuned to her own incandescent spirit can test the oneiric nature of poetry with such vigor of mind."—Major Jackson "Tyler Mills’ The City Scattered is a rich document of the “inner architecture” and social displacements that occur under the “skies / of capital.” Its choral structure deftly links the late days of the Weimar Republic to labor in the age of Amazon. Through swift images and attention to the complexity of pleasure, Mills’ poems show the independence and alienation of workers, particularly women, for whom the “purse thickens” while unemployment rises and money is “losing value.” Her crisp, suggestive case study illuminates the confluence of precarity and prosperity at the heart of our era. “Do not lean out,” warns a sign on a window in one poem; but we’re already leaning closer to read."—Zach Savich Goblets of gin, fans of feathers, war-bombed bricks, loaves of bread, soot, smoke, and paper money—such are the tangible things that touched the lives of women who worked as wage laborers during an era of Europe of cabaret and hyperinflation. The crises of modernity and capital, as well as the human experiences of women and who loved, lost, and fought against the structures of privilege that all the while aided them during a fraught stretch of time between wars, come alive in City Scattered, a chapbook of poems that invite us to experience and examine the conditions of labor that echo those of our current day.Paperback44 pagesTupelo Press, 20228.27 x 5.83 x 0.11 InchesISBN 9781946482686Poetry, Literature

City Scattered: Cabaret for Four Voices

By Rainer Maria RilkeEdited and translated by Ulrich BaerRainer Maria Rilke's poetry and letters have inspired countless readers around the world with their wisdom and insight into how we can be more than ourselves without recourse to religion, politics, or ideology: through the experiences of art and love. Gathered here for the first time in original translations are Rilke's candid, piercing, and lyrical reflections on love–the experience he considered paramount for human existence but also, with the exception of death, the event for which we are least prepared. Selected from Rilke's poetry and his vast correspondence, these passages present Rilke's contemplations on falling in love, being in love, losing love, and the mystical ways in which love endures.Paperback136 pagesWarbler Press, 20205 x 7.8 x .3 inchesISBN 9781734588125Poetry, Letters

Rilke on Love

By Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows "Each poem is short, spare, distilled. And each one is footnoted, so the reader might begin in enchantment, then trace the poetry to its source. A sure-footed path toward mastering one of the great masters of the last millennia."—Chicago Tribune Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness. However, what makes him of particular interest is the fact that he has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, and Rudolf Steiner have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought. In addition, his work has influenced the development of 20th century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition. Eckhart wrote at a time—much like our own—when society appeared to be coming apart at the seams. In the midst of all that chaos and uncertainty, he captured the many forms and stages of the love of God, the mystic path, and the journey of transformation—in language so startling that he, too, was often accused of heresy. Now, seven centuries later, this fresh, stunning rendering of his work translates the essence of one of Christianity's greatest poetic and spiritual voices. Here is a book that conveys the heart of Eckhart's teaching on what it means to love God and embark on an authentic spiritual journey—a journey that is characterized by mystery, paradox, and an embrace of the unknown. Paperback240 pagesHampton Roads Publishing, 20175 x 0.6 x 6.9 inchesISBN 9781571747648Theory and Aesthetics, Poetry

Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Joanna Macy and Anita BarrowsAn original translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's most famous work by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.Originally written from 1902-1908, Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of famous German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's (1875-1926) thoughts and reflections on the vocation of writing. The letters urge his correspondent to look inward and understand his motivations for pursuing a life devoted to the written word, looking beyond those who attempt to criticize and critique his work. His advice can be extended to all young writers.For the first time in twenty years, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy offer a new translation of this classic work that speaks to a new generation of artists, poets, and writers. With a new introduction and commentary on each letter, this edition places Rilke's letters in the context of today's world and the unique challenges of modern writers. Barrows and Macy are the first women to translate Letters to a Young Poet and their edition offers a fresh perspective on this work.Hardcover120 pagesRandom House, 2021Originally published in 19294.45 x 0.5 x 7.06 inchesISBN 9781611806861Poetry, Literature

Edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum Lyric poetry blossomed in 19th-century Germany under the fertilizing influence of Romanticism with its focus on the primacy of the imagination, worship of nature and childhood, dreaminess and nostalgia and preoccupation with thoughts of night and death. Although strictly defined as flourishing from 1798 to 1835, Romanticism is not timebound and German Romantic poetry was written both before and after these dates. Indeed, the 131 poems in this volume range in date from 1770 to 1903.Collected here are great romantic poems by 23 poets: Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, Novalis, Tieck, Brentano, Ruckert, Heine, Miirike, Storm, Nietzsche, and 12 more. Stanley Appelbaum has provided excellent new literal English translations of the poems on facing pages, along with an informative introduction and concise evaluations of each poet. This is a wonderful opportunity for any student of German or lover of poetry to enjoy a rich sampling from one of the world’s great poetic traditions.Paperback288 pagesText in German and EnglishDover, 19955.5 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780486284972Poetry

Great German Poems of the Romantic Era: A Dual-Language Book

By Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Will StoneA collection of haunting, mystical poems of the night by the great Rainer Maria Rilke most of which have never before been translated into EnglishOne night I held between my handsyour face. The moon fell upon it.In 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented the writer Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing twenty-two poems, meticulously copied out in his own hand, which bore the title “Poems to Night.” This cycle of poems which came about in an almost clandestine manner, are now thought to represent one of the key stages of this master poet’s development.Never before translated into English, this collection brings together all Rilke’s significant night poems in one volume.Paperback 96 pages Pushkin Collection, 2021 4.7 x 6.5 inches ISBN 9781782275534Poetry

Poems to Night

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by M.D. Herter Norton One of the literary masterpieces of the century, this translation is now presented with facing-page German. To Rilke himself the Sonnets to Orpheus were "perhaps the most mysterious in the way they came up and entrusted themselves to me, the most enigmatic dictation I have ever held through and achieved; the whole first part was written down in a single breathless act of obedience, between the 2nd and 5th of February, without one word being doubtful or having to be changed." With facing-page German. Paperback162 pagesText in English and German W.W. Norton, 2006Originally Published in 19235.3 x 0.4 x 7.7 inchesISBN 9780393328851Poetry

Sonnets to Orpheus

By Georg TraklTranslated by Robert Firmage “Trakl’s work is disturbing and visionary, melancholy and surreal… Delving deeply into the unconscious, Trakl’s poems are voyages of poetic discovery.”—Chris Faatz, Powell’s Books In Song of the Departed, George Trakl confronts the conflicts of pursuing truth in a difficult and declining world at the edge of war. Robert Firmage brilliantly translates Trakl’s work in this bilingual collection of writings about the unspeakable that lies beyond language, creating poetry that is intensely personal, haunting, dark, and eerily beautiful. Although Trakl is best known for his drug use, madness, and self-inflicted death, as Firmage’s commentary and translations illustrate, Trakl was more than a poete maudit: he was instead one of the most significant poets of the German language, supported during his lifetime by Ludvig Wittgenstein and later an influence on Ranier Maria Rilke, Paul Celan, James Wright, and poets across generations and languages. And yet, translations of is work remain underrepresented in English. Out of print for two decades, this revised edition includes over a dozen newly translated poems along with fresh commentary from their translator. Paperback184 pagesCopper Canyon Classics, 20125.4 x 0.8 x 7.4 inchesISBN 9781556593734 Poetry

Song of the Departed: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl

Original Price: $25.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Wassily KandinskyTranslated by Elizabeth R. Napier“I remember buying a copy of Sounds when it was first published in English, and the thrill of discovering this work, page by page. Kandinsky’s synthesis of abstraction and representation, of sound and meaning, remains an exciting challenge for artists and poets today. Sounds is unlike any other book. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in abstract art, poetry, and the unpredictable cavorting of the two.”—John Yau, author of Bijoux in the Dark“Possibly the most beautiful, innovative, and influential artist’s book of the twentieth century. A landmark that synthesizes Kandinsky’s pioneering abstractions with his radical sound poems and experimental typography.”—Starr Figura, The Museum of Modern Art, New YorkA dazzling yet little-known artist’s book that distills the painter’s seminal interests in abstraction and the unity of the artsWassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was a Russian pioneer of abstract painting whose work has influenced generations of artists. His Sounds (Klänge) of 1912 is one of the earliest, most beautiful examples of a 20th-century artist’s book. Its “sound poems” are alternately narrative and expressive, witty and simple in form. They treat questions of space, color, physical design, and the act of seeing in a world that offers multiple and often contradictory possibilities. The woodcut illustrations that accompany the poems range from representational designs to abstract vignettes. In its fusion of image and word, Sounds epitomizes the artist’s move toward abstraction and his aspiration to a synthesis of the arts. This updated edition of Sounds includes all of the book’s poems in English and German and its woodcuts, twelve of which appear in color for greater fidelity to the original. The translator’s introduction offers close formal examination of the poems and situates Sounds in the context of Kandinsky’s oeuvre. Although it was prized by prominent 20th-century artists, Sounds is one of the least known of Kandinsky’s major writings, and this remains the most authoritative English version.Paperback152 pagesYale University Press, 2019Originally published in 19137.4 x 0.3 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9780300238495Artist Monographs, Poetry, Printmaking, Woodcuts

Sounds

By Hans W. Cohn Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) was a German-Jewish poet who died in exile in Jerusalem. This 1974 book was the first full-length treatment of her poetry in English. The aim of the author, a practising psychologist at the time of this book's original publication, in this study of the poet's life, was to see poetry as an expression of the deeper urges of the psyche. The book takes as a point of departure Peter Hille's remark that Lasker-Schüler was a 'Sappho whose world had broken apart'. Her world of experience was a constant swing between extremes: an intense longing for communication which, thwarted, led back to isolation and despair. The wish for contact and withdrawal from reality often coexist in irreconcilable conflict, only resolved by the poet's own acceptance of things as they are. She came closest to such acceptance in her search for God, which led to her religious poetry. Paperback176 pagesCambridge University Press; Reissue edition, 2011Originally published in 19745.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780521168366Poetry

Else Lasker-Schüler: The Broken World

By Marie MadeleineEdited by Ronald K. SiegelTranslated by Eric A. ByeMarie-Madeleine was a German Jew, lesbian poet and novelist whose eroticism and love for morphine was revealed in many of her shocking, sensational, and bestselling books of the early twentieth century. Born Gertrud Günther, and starting at age 15 she wrote over 46 books until 1932 when Nazis condemned her work as degenerate. In 1943 she entered a sanatorium for morphine addiction where she died a mysterious death while under the care of Nazis doctors.Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine contains many of this fascinating woman's works, translated for the first time into English, and also contains Stephen J. Gertz's Foreword explaining why Marie-Madeleine has become a rediscovered heroine of lesbian and drug literature. Fascinating images from Marie-Madeleine's lost literature and career supplement this volume.Paperback360 pagesProcess, 20167 x 1 x 9 inchesISBN 9781934170601Women’s Studies, Poetry

Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine in the Time of Nazis

Original Price: $24.95UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Frances Cannon Foreword by Esther Leslie An illuminated tour of Walter Benjamin's ideas; a graphic translation; an encyclopedia of fragments. Walter Benjamin was a man of letters, an art critic, an essayist, a translator, a philosopher, a collector, and an urban flâneur. In his writings, he ambles, samples, and explores. With Walter Benjamin Reimagined, Frances Cannon offers a visual and literary response to Benjamin's work. With detailed and dreamlike pen-and-ink drawings and hand-lettered text, Cannon gives readers an illuminated tour of Walter Benjamin's thoughts—a graphic translation, an encyclopedia of fragments. Cannon has not created a guide to Benjamin's greatest ideas—this is not an illustrated Walter Benjamin cheat sheet—but rather a beautifully rendered work of graphic literature. Cannon doesn't plod through thickets of minutiae; she strolls—a flâneuse herself—using Benjamin's words and her own drawings to construct a creative topography of Benjamin's writing. Phrases from “Unpacking My Library,” for example, are accompanied by images of flying papers, stray books, stacked books—books “not yet touched by the mild boredom of order”—and a bearded mage. Cannon takes the reader through different periods of Benjamin's writing: “Artifacts of Youth,” nostalgic musings on his childhood; “Fragments of a Critical Eye,” early writings, political observations, and cultural criticism; “Athenaeum of Imagination,” meditations on philosophy and psychology; “A Stroll through the Arcades,” Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus; and “A Collection of Dreams and Stories,” experimental and fantastical writings. With drawings and text, Cannon offers a phantasmagorical tribute to Benjamin's wandering eye. Hardcover184 pagesMIT Press, May 20197 x 9 x 0.7 inchesISBN 9780262039963Graphic Novel, Philosophy, Urban Studies, Poetry

Walter Benjamin Reimagined: A Graphic Translation of Poetry, Prose, Aphorisms, and Dreams

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Ulrich Baer “Even though each of these letters of condolence is personalized with intimate detail, together they hammer home Rilke’s remarkable truth about the death of another: that the pain of it can force us into a ‘deeper . . . level of life’ and render us more ‘vibrant.’ Here we have a great poet’s reflections on our greatest mystery.”—Billy Collins“A treasure . . . The solace Rilke offers is uncommon, uplifting and necessary.”––The Guardian“As we live our lives, it is possible to feel not sadness or melancholy but a rush of power as the life of others passes into us. This rhapsodic volume teaches us that death is not a negation but a deepening experience in the onslaught of existence. What a wise and victorious book!”—Henri Cole Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke’s voluminous, never-before-translated letters to bereaved friends and acquaintances, The Dark Interval is a profound vision of the mourning process and a meditation on death’s place in our lives. Following the format of Letters to a Young Poet, this book arranges Rilke’s letters into an uninterrupted sequence, showcasing the full range of the great author’s thoughts on death and dying, as well as his sensitive and moving expressions of consolation and condolence.Presented with care and authority by master translator Ulrich Baer, The Dark Interval is a literary treasure, an indispensable resource for anyone searching for solace, comfort, and meaning in a time of grief. Hardcover128 pagesModern Library, 20185 x 0.6 x 7.6 inchesISBN 9780525509844Letters, Correspondence

The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation

By Bertolt BrechtTranslated by David Constantine and Tom KuhnForeword by Barbara Brecht-Schall “Not a title that would immediately spring to mind in relation to Brecht but, as these translations by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn show, Germany's most innovative dramatist was also a gifted lyrical poet, full of passion and insight...”—Belfast Telegraph “What also surprises is the tenderness [Brecht] could convey...this book shows that there were many sides to him.”—The Herald "These deeply personal poems reveal that "[Brecht's] best love poems match the provocations of his drama"—William Giraldi, New RepublicIn Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate Bertolt Brecht's poetic legacy into English, the author of The Threepenny Opera emerges not just as one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also as a fiercely creative twentieth-century poet. With a personal introduction by Brecht's own daughter, Barbara Brecht-Schall, Love Poems features all-new translations of 78 of Brecht's most famous and personal works, composed in both love and grief, including "Remembering Marie A.," "The Song of Surbaya-Johnny," "The actress in exile," "Spring," "The Seventh Psalm," and "Send me a leaf," which was featured in The New Yorker. Paperback144 pagesLiveright Publishing, 20155.5 x 0.4 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9781631491115Poetry

Love Poems

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by J.B. Leishman Possibility of Being is a selection of poems by one of the most moving and original writers of this century, Rainer Maria Rilke (1857-l926). The title (taken from one of the Sonnets to Orpheus, ''Ibis is the Creature") reflects the central concern of both Rilke's life and art: the achievement of "being,” which this most spiritual yet least doctrinaire of modern German poets defined as "the experiencing of the completest possible inner intensity.'' The eighty-four poems included in this small volume will serve as a sound and inviting introduction to Rilke's strategies in the pursuit of "being." And just as the unicorn in "This Is the Creature" has an eternal "possibility of being" but only becomes visible in the mirror held by a virgin, so can our own possibilities become manifest in the mirror held by the sensitive artist. The poems are chosen from The Book of Hours (1899-1903), The Book of Images (1902 and 1906), New Poems (1907 and 1908), Requiem (1909), Duino Elegies (1923), Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), and the posthumous Poems 1906-26. This selection was made by Professor Theodore Ziolkowski of Princeton University, who drew from the various New Directions volumes of Rilke's work translated by J. B. Leishman. Paperback127 pagesNew Directions; Reprint Edition, 19775.3 x 0.4 x 8 inchesISBN 9780811206518Poetry

Possibility of Being: A Selection of Poems

By Irene Gammel "Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa mounts an enthusiastic case for her as one of the great unsung modernists."—Village Voice"The Baroness could not have asked for a more thoughtful and engaged monument than Gammel's book."—The New York Times Book Review Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) is considered by many to be the first American dadaist as well as the mother of dada. An innovator in poetic form and an early creator of junk sculpture, "the Baroness" was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances. Some thought her merely crazed, others thought her a genius. The editor Margaret Anderson called her "perhaps the only figure of our generation who deserves the epithet extraordinary." Yet despite her great notoriety and influence, until recently her story and work have been little known outside the circle of modernist scholars. In Baroness Elsa, Irene Gammel traces the extraordinary life and work of this daring woman, viewing her in the context of female dada and the historical battles fought by women in the early twentieth century. Striding through the streets of Berlin, Munich, New York, and Paris wearing such adornments as a tomato-soup can bra, teaspoon earrings, and black lipstick, the Baroness erased the boundaries between life and art, between the everyday and the outrageous, between the creative and the dangerous. Her art objects were precursors to dada objects of the teens and twenties, her sound and visual poetry were far more daring than those of the male modernists of her time, and her performances prefigured feminist body art and performance art by nearly half a century. Paperback562 pagesThe MIT Press, 20037 x 1.3 x 9 inchesISBN 9780262572156Dada

Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity

By Georg TraklTranslated by James ReidelBook Three of Our Trakl "Striking and still mysterious poems."—New York Review of Books"Not only a testament to the heavenly spiral of the biographic, and all that it can provide in weight and relief, but a re-envisioning of how that glass mountain may be perceived, in all its archetypal, quest-filled, damnation-evoked glory. The combination of the biographical research and the embodiment of it within the text is incredible."—Yellow RabbitsOrdered chronologically from 1909 to 1915, A Skeleton Plays Violin collects the work of expressionist poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914,) including unfinished poems and significant variations. Interpolated through this volume is a biographical essay that provides more information about Trakl's life, especially as it relates to his poetry. The darkness of his work parallels what is known of his lifetime, which was short and plagued by addiction, as well as the tumult of the first world war, which he experienced first-hand as a medic. Included is "Grodek," one of Trakl's most famous works, which is named for the 1914 battle between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies. Although most of his recognition came posthumously, Trakl had significant impact on his contemporaries, such as Else Lasker-Schüler and Ludwig Wittgenstein. His involvement in both the Viennese cultural scene and front-line warfare placed him in some of the most pivotal moments of his era, and his work is an essential member of the expressionist canon. Hardcover270 pagesSeagull Books, 20175 x 8.5 x 1.1 inchesISBN 9780857424297Poetry

A Skeleton Plays Violin

By Georg TraklTranslated by James ReidelBook two of Our Trakl “Sebastian Dreaming is a dark and enveloping book filled with familiar expressionist energies and barraging pastoral haunts. The text is a mere ninety-two pages long, entirely English, entirely exquisite and damning, both still and swirling: a presence of right and wrong, good and evil, complacent and anxious from start to finish. . . . Slowly ascending and descending through the book ultimately results in a challenge worth taking for the breathtaking moments of beauty and collapse that fill a world of dreams and nightmares to be valued equally.”—Queen Mobs Tea House"Sebastian Dreaming is a book of longing and nostalgia. Here we are today, nostalgic as a society for conflict, because we have forgotten the despair it works over those who bear witness. Young Georg Trakl and his poem-dreams are necessary reminders that this nostalgia—maybe all nostalgia—is misplaced, sometimes tragically so."—AsymptoteThe second book in Seagull’s ambitious series of Georg Trakl’s works, Sebastian Dreaming was the second, and final, collection prepared for publication by Trakl himself. Published after his death, it was perhaps even tied to it: forced into a military hospital by the psychological trauma of his World War I experiences, the Austrian poet requested that his publisher send him proofs of the book. He waited a week, and then overdosed on cocaine.A century later, the book appears for the first time in English. While a number of its poems have been included in other collections, translator James Reidel argues that this particular book deserves to stand on its own and be read as one piece, as Trakl intended. Only by doing this can we begin to see Trakl in his proper time and place, as an early modern poet whose words nonetheless continue to exert a powerful hold on us while we make our way through a new, uncharted century. Hardcover72 pagesSeagull Books, 2016Originally published in 19155 x 0.6 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780857423313Poetry

Sebastian Dreaming

By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Edward Snow “[Edward Snow] has emerged as Rilke's outstanding English-language interpreter . . . [He] is doing important work. Robert Lowell once wrote that it was hard to imagine Rilke first written in English, that the poems were sealed in German. Snow is unsealing them.”—Robert Phillips, Houston ChronicleWritten only four years before Rilke's death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet's final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life's transformations but also as an ideally receptive state of being. Because Orpheus has visited the realm of death and returned to the living, his lyre, a unifying presence in these poems, is an emblem of fluidity and musical transcendence. And Eurydice, condemned to Hades as a result of Orpheus's backward glance, becomes in Rilke's universe a mythical figure of consolation and hope.Edward Snow, in his translations of New Poems, The Book of Images, Uncollected Poems, and Duino Elegies, has emerged as Rilke's most able English-language interpreter. Adhering faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English, Snow's Sonnets to Orpheus should serve as the authoritative translation for years to come.Paperback144 pagesText in German and EnglishNorth Point Press, 2005Originally published in 19235.5 x 0.3 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780865477216Poetry

Sonnets to Orpheus: Bilingual Edition

Translated and with commentary by Ludwig Max Fischer, PhDForeword by Andrew Harvey Vowing at an early age “to be a poet or nothing at all,” Hermann Hesse rebelled against formal education, focusing on a rigorous program of independent study that included literature, philosophy, art, and history. One result of these efforts was a series of novels that became counterculture bibles that remain widely influential today. Another was a body of evocative spiritual poetry. Published for the first time in English, these vivid, probing short works reflect deeply on the challenges of life and provide a spiritual solace that transcends specific denominational hymns, prayers, and rituals.The Seasons of the Soul offers valuable guidance in poetic form for those longing for a more meaningful life, seeking a sense of homecoming in nature, in each stage of life, in a renewed relationship with the divine. Extensive quotations from his prose introduce each theme addressed in the book: love, imagination, nature, the divine, and the passage of time. A foreword by Andrew Harvey reintroduces us to a figure about whom some may have believed everything had already been said. Thoughtful commentary throughout from translator Ludwig Max Fischer helps readers understand the poems within the context of Hesse’s life. Paperback113 pagesNorth Atlantic Books, 20116 x 0.4 x 8.9 inchesISBN 9781583943137Poetry

The Seasons of the Soul: The Poetic Guidance and Spiritual Wisdom of Hermann Hesse

Edited by Neue Galerie Deputy Director Scott Gutterman “The intertwining of the visual and the literary is the underlying basis for this provocative and thoughtful anthology . . . What is undeniable is the pleasure in slowly sifting through Gutterman’s choices . . . Gutterman has been brooding, he says, on the associations between poetry and the visual arts for 30 years, and his choice is both intriguing and captivating. It makes us look more intensely, feel — and think.”—Art Quarterly“This book would make a charming gift for a literary sort with an eye for art, or vice versa. Art ranges from Vermeer to Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko and Larry Rivers. The poets flow from Shakespeare to William Carlos Williams and Rainer Maria Rilke.”—StarTribune The world’s great poets interpret the world’s great art in this exquisite book that investigates the connection between art and words, deepening our understanding of both.The poet and the artist share a special kind of vision—an ability to see and penetrate the very essence of their subjects. This volume features poems by writers who turned to paintings for their inspiration, as well as paintings by artists who based their works on poems. Stretching across centuries and styles, this collection includes Rossetti’s haunting sonnet based on Botticelli’s "Primavera"; Wallace Stevens’s “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” a masterful meditation on an iconic painting by Picasso; William Carlos Williams’s joyous interpretations of scenes by Breughel; and Adrienne Rich lending a compassionate voice to the subject of Edwin Romanzo Elmer’s "The Mourning Chair". These and other pairings appear as elegant texts facing full page, glowing illustrations of the paintings. An introduction to some of the greatest poets and painters in history, this remarkable book makes a perfect gift, offering compelling insights into the worlds of art and literature, and the relationship between the two. Hardcover144 pages | 60 color illustrationsPrestel, 20158.6 x 0.8 x 10.9 inchesISBN 9783791354774Poetry, Art

Sunlight on the River: Poems About Paintings, Paintings About Poems

By Georg TraklTranslated by James ReidelBook one of ﻿Our Trakl “Trakl died in 1913 of a cocaine overdose after an extended bout of depression triggered by serving as a medical officer at the beginning of World War I, and this republication of his first book of poems captures that misery in excruciating detail.”—Independent“The work, as wartime as it is pastoral grimace, disturbs and plunders and rattles. . . . These translations are full of devout study and inference, and our translator has stepped into the shoes of a tormented, beautiful poet with challenging, often chaotic scenes and sequences, and has channeled the original spirit and merit of Trakl’s era. The lines flutter and echo faithfully the original German, which I have had the bleak pleasure of reading in the past. The work is bountiful and wholesome; these translations feel refreshing and chiseled, a consistent, contemporary arousal of Trakl’s first book.”—Queen Mobs Tea House The work of poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914,) a leading Austrian-German expressionist, has been praised by many, including his contemporaries Rainer Maria Rilke and Else Lasker-Schüler, as well as his patron Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein famously wrote that while he did not truly understand Trakl’s poems, they had the tone of a “truly ingenious person,” which pleased him. This difficulty in understanding Trakl’s poems is not unique. Since the first publication of his work in 1913, there has been endless discussion about how the verses should be understood, leading to controversies over the most accurate way to translate them.This new translation, the first book in a three-volume collection of Trakl's work, marks the hundredth anniversary of Trakl’s death during the first months of World War I. In a refreshing contrast to previous translated collections of Trakl’s work, James Reidel is mindful of how the poet himself wished to be read, emphasizing the order and content of the verses to achieve a musical effect. Trakl’s verses were also marked by allegiance to both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a fact which Reidel honors with impressive research into the historicity of the poet’s language.Poems sets itself apart as the best translation of Trakl available today and will introduce English readers to the powerful verses of this war time poet. Hardcover120 pagesUniversity of Chicago Press, 20155 x 0.6 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780857422460Poetry

Poems

By Kurt TucholskyTranslated by Cindy Opitz "Rheinsberg is at once a delightful and a deeply disquieting story."—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Hester Among the Ruins and The Scenic Route "A wonderful and charming love story, finally rediscovered and brought to America"—Claudia Dreifus, Columbia University, New York One summer before World War I, a young couple escapes on a romantic weekend getaway to the small German town of Rheinsberg, north of Berlin, in the midst of a rural landscape filled with country houses and castles, cobble-stone streets, lush forests, and dreamy lakes. The story of Wolfie and Claire, told with a fresh, new style of ironic humor, became Kurt Tucholsky’s first literary success and the blueprint for love for an entire generation. Kurt Tucholsky was a brilliant satirist, poet, storyteller, lyricist, pacifist, and Democrat; a fighter, lady’s man, one of the most famous journalists in Weimar Germany, and an early warner against the Nazis. Erich Kaestner called him a "small, fat Berliner," who "wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter". When Tucholsky began to write, he had five voices—in the end, he had none. His books were burned and banned by the Nazis, who drove him out of his country. But he is not forgotten. Rheinsberg is at once a delightful and a deeply disquieting story. The lovers, Claire and Wolfie—a silly but harmless pair—escape the confines of Berlin for a romantic romp in the countryside. As their brief interlude nears its end, already consigned to memory, there comes with it an end to innocence, to frivolity. It was 1912; Kurt Tucholsky’s prescience was uncanny: the holiday is over and soon we will go to war. Hardcover98 pagesBerlinica Press, 2014Originally Published in 19125 x 0.5 x 8 inchesISBN 9781935902256Romantic Fiction, Poetry

Rheinsberg: A Storybook for Lovers

By Rainer Maria RilkeEdited and translated by Stephen Mitchell Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the greatest lyric German poets. Born in Prague, he published his first book of poems, Leben und Lieber, at age nineteen. He met Lou Salomé, the talented and spirited daughter of a Russian army officer, who influenced him deeply. In 1902 he became the friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his twelve-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. In 1919 he went to Switzerland where he spent the last years of his life. It was there that he wrote his last two works, Duino Elegies (1923) and the Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). "This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced," (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version. Paperback400 pagesVintage International, 19895.1 x 0.8 x 8 inchesISBN 9780679722014Poetry

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Edited by Erika A. Metzger and Michael M. MetzgerContributors: Alan F. Keele, Erika and Michael Metzger, and George C. Schoolfield"The ten essays by eminent Rilke scholars succeed in their intent to move toward a new image of Rilke."—German Quarterly "This study is a wonderful, animated text, a lovely tribute to the poet's great humanity, and it should be included in any study of Rilke."—Colloquia Germanica"The cosmopolitan solitary is shown against the background of a developing modernistic culture, to which (Rilke) substantially contributed. The authors show profound insight into the many problems raised ... by work which combines the ineffable with the physical."—Modern Language Studies Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is the best-known German poet of his generation and is widely appreciated today by readers in Europe, the United States, and world-wide. Because of the inventiveness and musicality of his poetic language and the visionary intuition of his thinking, Rilke's influence extends well beyond poetry to include religion, philosophy, the social sciences, and the arts. His works have been widely translated into English, and new renderings of such poem cycles as "Duino Elegies" and "The Sonnets to Orpheus" appear frequently. Critics regard Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as a seminal modern novel. The Companion to Rilke provides essential, up-to-date essays by top Rilke scholars on a wide range of the major aspects of Rilke's life and works. The volume follows the chronology of Rilke's career, emphasizing those works that have not been met with the greatest critical interest. Among the topics covered are: Rilke's life and thought; the writings before 1902; Das Stunden-Buch and Das Buch der Bilder; the Neue Gedichte, The Cornet and other brief narratives; Malte Laurids Brigge; The Duino Elegies; The Sonnets to Orpheus; Rilke as a poet in French; Rilke and the visual arts.Paperback323 PagesBOYE6, 20046 x 0.7 x 9 inchesISBN 9781571133021Literary Criticism

A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke

Original Price: $28.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Ralph Freedom"Lively and detailed."—Michael Hofmann, New York Times Book Review"What Freedman's book does, and more thoroughly than any of the other biographies, is to retell Rilke's story meticulously and with a welcome attention to the circumambient social and political circumstances."—Michael André Bernstein, New Republic"An extraordinary accomplishment—a scrupulous, attentive, and beautifully written account of the life and work of one of this century's greatest, yet most elusive poets."—Mark StrandIn this outstanding biography, Freedman traces Rilke's extraordinary career by combining detailed accounts of salient episodes from the poet's restless life with an intimate reading of the verse and prose that refract them. Paperback640 pages | 65 halftonesNorthwestern University Press, 19986 x 2 x 9 inchesISBN 9780810115439 Biography

Life of a Poet: A Biography of Rainer Maria Rilke

By Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Charlie LouthRilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now available in a beautiful hardcover Penguin edition. At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for generations of writers and artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Patti Smith. With honesty, elegance, and a deep understanding of the loneliness that often comes with being an artist, Rilke's letters are an endless source of inspiration and comfort. Lewis Hyde's new introduction explores the context in which these letters were written and how the author embraced his isolation as a creative force. This edition also includes Rilke's later work "The Letter from the Young Worker". Written between 1903 and 1908 to a student who had sent Rilke his poems for evaluation, these ten letters—among the most famous and beloved of this century—reveal the deeply felt ideas about life and art that shaped the great poet's work. Two-color interior. Hardcover144 pagesPenguin Classics, 2013Originally Published in 19295.1 x 0.6 x 7.6 inchesISBN 9780143107149Poetry, Letters, Advice

By Robert WalserTranslated by Christopher Middleton "The poems also give us Walser’s manner in concentrated miniature, and it could be that rhyme—joining the disparate, cultivating the arbitrary - is at the heart of what he is doing. They are odd, whimsical, insouciant things, exhilarating in their ability to be what they are."—The Times Literary Supplement"The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser’s work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be?"—Rivka Galchen, Harper’s MagazineIn a small, exquisite clothbound format resembling the early Swiss and German editions of Walser’s work, Thirty Poems collects famed translator Christopher Middleton’s favorite poems from the more than five hundred Walser wrote. The illustrations range from an early poem in perfect copperplate handwriting, to one from a 1927 Czech-German newspaper, to a microscript.Hardcover64 pagesNew Directions, 20125.3 x 0.4 x 7.3 inchesISBN 9780811220019Poetry

Thirty Poems

By Georg TraklAn undeniable aura surrounds the name of Georg Trakl (1887-1914,) a poet of intense inner vision and originality whose work stands alongside that of Yeats, Valéry, and T. S. Eliot. Besides Rilke, his more famous admirers include Karl Kraus and Martin Heidegger. The distinctive tone of Trakl's work—especially admired by his patron Ludwig Wittgenstein—is autumnal and melancholy. Trakl was writing at a time of spiritual and social disintegration on the eve of the First World War, when personal values and perceptions tended to be subsumed in a more generalized anguish and exaltation. Neo-romantic, early modernist, his rich, vitally sensuous poetry can be seen to mark the transition from impressionism to expressionism, but at the same time transcends such categories. Trakl's poetry has previously only been available in English in short selections or in anthologies. This bilingual edition, the most comprehensive to date, gives readers the chance to get to know Trakl's work more fully than ever before.Paperback193 pagesText in German and EnglishNorthwestern University Press, 20056 x 0.6 x 9 inchesISBN 9780810120068Poetry

Poems and Prose

By Hermann Hesse Translated by James Wright “Hesse is a writer of suggestion, of nuance, of spiritual intimation.”—Christian Science Monitor“One of the defining spirits of our century.”—Ralph Freedman, Princeton UniversityFew American readers seem to be aware that Hermann Hesse, author of the epic novels Steppenwolf and Siddartha, among many others, also wrote poetry, the best of which the poet James Wright has translated and included in this book. This is a special volume—filled with short, direct poems about love, death, loneliness, the seasons—that is imbued with some of the imagery and feeling of Hesse’s novels but that has a clarity and resonance all its own, a sense of longing for love and for home that is both deceptively simple and deeply moving.Paperback79 pagesFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008Originally published in 19715.7 x 0.3 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9780374526412Poetry

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Rilke: Poems (Everyman's Library)

Art and Artists: Poems (Everyman's Pocket Poet Series)

Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies (Dover Thrift Editions)

Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan

Letters to a Young Poet

Nietzsche on Love

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City Scattered: Cabaret for Four Voices

Rilke on Love

Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul

Letters to a Young Poet

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