Many Glove Compartments: Selected Poems (Dichten No. 5) [Paperback]

Oskar Pastior (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2001 | Series: Dichten

Poetry/Prose. Translated from the German by Harry Mathews, Christopher Middleton, and Rosmarie Waldrop. "An Oskar-Pastior-poem is like life. As soon as you think you've got hold of it, it has already moved you ahead by the fraction of a hair"-Klaus Hensel. "For Pastior, language itself is the stuff of life.He explores it through puns, lists, strings, heaps, fields, dictionaries, alphabets, collage, montage, potpourris-all in orgiastic expansion. The result is 'thought-music as a leaping perspective'-a perspective, in which a successful 'nonsensical' text like 'ur-cur trusts sulfur baths: plush' (p. 90) 'is infinitely more precise than this kind of statement'"-from the Introductory Note by Rosmarie Waldrop.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Berlin-based poet Oskar Pastior says translation is simply not possible "the wrong word for a process that does not exist," as he puts it in the introduction to Many Glove Compartments: Selected Poems. Nonetheless, translators Harry Mathews, Christopher Middleton and Rosmarie Waldrop have gamely tried to recreate the mad, witty wordplay of Pastior's German poetry in this volume. Palindromes, anagrams, puns, "sonnetburgers" and exuberant nonsense "abracadabra as was tartar as was kandahar- cardan (tack that man and gal flat as washrags!) as was cash" prevail as Pastior, who is the only German member of Oulipo and who will be 75 this year, tinkers with the smallest units of language and the oldest of lyric forms.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Burning Deck (November 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886224447
• ISBN-13: 978-1886224445
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #748,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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