A dual-language collection of vivid, tightly knit poems from one of the most important contemporary poets writing in German.
The Art of Topiary is the gorgeous product of a long collaboration between Jan Wagner and American poet David Keplinger. With the care of master gardeners tending their plants, Wagner and Keplinger have shaped Wagner’s originals—acclaimed internationally, now in English for the first time—into precise, delightful, and highly modern translations.
Along the way, the collection unfolds dialogues between discipline and freedom, sound and sense, faithfulness and improvisation. In these poems, formal structures are a corset loosened by each line of verse, a garden always pleasurably at risk of being overrun. Yet for all Wagner’s wit and sharp poetic detail, The Art of Topiary is written with an intimate earnest: a swarm of gnats take on an urgent mystery as they hum in code around the speaker’s ears, a bird atop a rhino’s leathery back becomes a fragile porcelain cup, and the antlers of an elk reach for the air like a champion for a trophy.
Compact, lightfooted, and curious, The Art of Topiary is the exciting American debut of a stunning and joyful voice in global literature.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Contents
Translating [with] Jan Wagner
Part One
rhino
gecko
quince paté
essay on gnats
elderflower
december 1914
the west
wejherowo
teabag
augustin lopez: the art of topiary
chameleon
pinochle
nicosia
corn
Part Two
mushrooms
histories: onesilos
moor-oxen
see-saw
störtebeker
clover
bedsheets
in the well
self-portrait with a swarm of bees
lazarus
amish
elegy for knievel
oysters
solitaire
the man from the sea
doberman
the merman
steinway
sloes
centaurs' blues
essay on soap
Part Three
owl
from the globe factory
koalas
krynica morska
essay on napkins
nail
rain barrel variations
essay on fences
elk
ficus watkinsiana
dachshund
rübezahl
field poppy
pieter codde: portrait of a man with watch
koi
Notes
Acknowledgments
