- Hardcover: 168 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (12 Nov 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691117454
- ISBN-13: 978-0691117454
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.4 x 2.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,571,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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[A] moving and essential new book. These poets have a particular angle of witness that comes from powerlessness, from being vulnerable, injured, marginal, excluded. IA'm struck by the personal way these poets confront history, test and interrogate language, especially their mother tongue, question the efficacy of poetry, and repeatedly defend the importance of private feeling. -- Edward Hirsch Washington Post Book World I like this provocative book quite a lot: it is full of beautiful poems written under the worst historical conditions possible. It makes you think about the connection between lyric beauty (there's lots of it here) and testimony. -- Dan Chiasson Poetry
Product Description
They are nine women with much in common - all German speaking, all poets, all personal witnesses to the horror and devastation that was World War II. Yet, in this deeply moving collection, each provides a singularly personal glimpse into the effects of war on language, place, poetry, and womanhood. "After Every War" is a book of translations of women poets living in Europe in the decades before and after World War II: Rose Auslander, Elizabeth Langgasser, Nelly Sachs, Gertrud Kolmar, Else Lasker-Schuler, Ingeborg Bachmann, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Dagmar Nick, and Hilde Domin. Several of the writers are Jewish and, therefore, also witnesses and participants in one of the darkest occasions of human cruelty, the Holocaust. Their poems, as well as those of the other writers, provide a unique biography of the time - but with a difference. These poets see public events through the lens of deep private losses. They chart the small occasions, the bittersweet family ties, the fruit dish on a table, the lost soul arriving at a railway station; in other words, the sheer ordinariness through which cataclysm is experienced, and by which life is cruelly shattered. They reclaim these moments and draw the reader into them. The poems are translated and introduced, with biographical notes on the authors, by renowned Irish poet Eavan Boland. Her interest in the topic is not abstract. As an Irish woman, she has observed the heartbreaking effects of violence on her own country. Her experience has drawn her closer to these nine poets, enabling her to render into English the beautiful, ruminative quality of their work and to present their poems for what they are: documentaries of resilience - of language, of music and of the human spirit - in the hardest of times.
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2 reviews
MaconPoet
21 April 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is one of the most essential books of poetry that I own. It introduced me to German poets, such as Rose Auslander, Else Lasker-Schuler and Hilde Domin, whom I'd never read before and who now number among my favorite poets. The poems are stylistically diverse, but Boland has chosen poems that meditate upon life, survival, and beauty within the context of death and a horrific war. As Rose Auslander writes, her motherland has become "Word." Language's ability to bring meaning to meaninglessness is of primary importance in this superb collection. I might quibble with some of Boland's choices as a translator, but she has done an invaluable service in bringing these poems to an English-speaking readership.
A new look at forgotten poets
23 Oct 2004
Format:Hardcover
The translations in After Every War are lovely and lyrical. The poems are translated from the German. It is interesting that several of the poets were German-speaking Jewish poets who faced great hardships. I particularly liked the work of Else Lasker-Schuler (1869-1945)
"Sweet angels, I have eaten
such bitter bread. push open
The door of heaven. For me, for now --
Although I am still alive --
Although it is not allowed.
"Sweet angels, I have eaten
such bitter bread. push open
The door of heaven. For me, for now --
Although I am still alive --
Although it is not allowed.
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