Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems - Hardcover

Grunbein, Durs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374260745 ISBN 13: 9780374260743

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Synopsis

The first English translation of Germany's leading contemporary poet.

...what is the whole surreal jokeshop
of terrors compared to the

infinitely chance little
tricks of a poem.

--from "MonoLogical Poem #1"

Born in Dresden in 1962, Durs Grünbein is the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, a place where, he wrote, "the best refuge was a closed mouth." In unsettling, often funny, sometimes savage lines whose vivid images reflect his deep love for and connection with the visual arts, Grunbein is reinventing German poetry and taking on the most pressing moral concerns of his generation. Brilliantly edited and translated by the English poet Michael Hofmann, Ashes for Breakfast expertly introduces Germany's most highly acclaimed contemporary poet to American readers.

About this title

About the Author:

Durs Grünbein is the author of six previous volumes of poetry and a collection of essays. His work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg Büchner Preis, which he won at age 33. He has lived in Berlin since 1985.

Review:

"Durs Grünbein is a highly original poet, an heir to the riches of German and European Modernism. What’s striking in this poetry is a hard, almost cynical tone which turns out to be just a lid on a jar containing many substances." --Adam Zagajewski

"Durs Grünbein is one of the most intelligent poets writing in German today. His subject is nothing less that 'this life, so useless, so rich.' It is wonderful to have his selected poems in Michael Hofmann's note-perfect translation." --John Ashbery

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0374260745
• ISBN 13: 9780374260743
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320