From Publishers Weekly
In over 40 years' work, German poet and cultural critic Enzenberger has captured the complex interlayerings of public and private realities, ultimately testifying to their difficult inseparability, their conflicts and contradictions. The product of the contrary forebears Bertolt Brecht and Gottfried Benn, among others, Enzenberger's poetry is a complex fusion of dramatic satire and meditative verse, quietly fixed on structures of oppression and coercion. Enzensbeger proceeds with intense, incisive portraits drawn as though by an inverse WhitmanAthe Pensioner, the Employee, the discreet Detective. This painterly method is often coupled with sometimes jarring transformations of figures and contexts, used not for the sake of aesthetics but for invoking moral consciousness, as in the early "Poem about the Future, November 1964": "Two men appear on a tractor/ (Chou En-Lai is in Moscow)/ Two men in stone-grey overalls/ (Nobel Prize-winners in evening dress)/ Two men with slender sticks/ (gold medals from Tokyo)/ at the wayside amid yellow leaves/ (the dead guerillas of Vietnam)..." The dangers of piety and self-righteousness are avoided by generous doses of self-indictment; Enzensbeger is a master of deflating senses of middle-class accomplishment, his own often foremost among them. The later work, particularly the new poems of Kiosk, gives way to a more philosophical, forgiving tone where observations and speculations on nature, evolution and mind are given freer reign: "the thought/ behind the other thought./ A pebble, ordinary,/ homogeneous, hard,/ not for sale." The translations by varying hands are consistently clear, capturing the sharp, spare style. (The Selected includes the German.) Though the forms and focus of this poetry change over time, its intent and integrity remain consistent, as do its richness and clarity. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
These five books admirably demonstrate the diversity of international poetry; they have no common ground, except, perhaps, that they share an American publisher. Transtromer and Enzensberger are translated (from Swedish and German, respectively), in crisp, powerful English. Transtromer is probably the most highly regarded of poets in Sweden, enjoying a fine reputation worldwide, and his poems are widely available in English. This collection offers new work in a dual-language text that invites careful reading, and the English versions ring for what they are, pleasingly. Enzensberger's work is presented only in translation, but it doesn't seem likely that you will go wrong trusting translator Hamburger. Enzensberger is a product of Nazi Nuremberg, a disciple of Marx, and a wry, satiric, rogue with intelligence, who finds poetry in social criticism and a wide range of techno-scientific knowledge. The work collected in The Colonade of Teeth, an anthology of Modern Hungarian poetry, has been translated by many hands. How awful it is that we are not more familiar with these poets: Sandor Csoori, Miklos Radnoti, Agnes Nemes Nagy?35 in all. All were born after 1900; Gyozo Ferencz, the youngest, was born in 1954. Hungarians have a national treasure in these poets, and this volume should shed a well-deserved light on their work. Bejamin Zephaniah is a Rasta poet, Jamaican playwright, and musician who writes for the page with an acute awareness of speech and sound. He slips in and out of idiom and dialect without losing either poise or rhythm. Dunmore employs a more measured line, a soft-stepping gait but is no less passionate. Her menagerie includes tigers, toads, and tortoises, as well as muggers and murderers. Her keen sense of story and lyrical voice will reward many readers. A varied assembly, then; there's something for everybody here. Recommended for international poetry collections.?Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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