W.G. Sebald,Iain Galbraith
A publishing landmarkâ€”the first major collection of poems by one of the late twentieth centuryâ€™s literary masters,Â ,German-born W. G. Sebald is best known as the innovative author of ,Austerlitz, ,the prose classic of World War II culpability and conscience that ,The Guardian, called â€œa new literary form, part hybrid novel, part memoir, part travelogue.â€ Its publication put Sebald in the company of Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges. Yet Sebaldâ€™s brilliance as a poet has been largely unacknowledgedâ€”until now.,Â ,Skillfully translated by Iain Galbraith, the nearly one hundred poems in ,Across the Land and the Water, range from those Sebald wrote as a student in the sixties to those completed right before his untimely death in 2001. Featuring eighty-eight poems published in English for the first time and thirty-three from unpublished manuscripts, this collection also brings together all the verse he placed in books and journals during his lifetime.,Â ,Here are Sebaldâ€™s trademark themesâ€”from nature and history (â€œEvents of war within/a life cracks/across the Order of the World/spreading from Cassiopeia/a diffuse pain reaching into/the upturned leaves on the treesâ€), to wandering and wondering (â€œI have even begun/to speak in foreign tongues/roaming like a nomad in my own/town . . .â€), to oblivion and memory (â€œIf you knew every cranny/of my heart/you would yet be ignorant/of the pain my happy/memories bringâ€).,Â ,Soaring and searing, the poetry of W. G. Sebald is an indelible addition to his superb body of work, and this unique collection is bound to become a classic in its own right.
Poetry,European Literature,German Literature,Literature,Cultural,Germany,Fiction
Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001