Our twice-yearly daylight savings holiday, in which we faithfully, collectively adjust our clocks, is purely human tampering with the calendar. Yet, it is a practice that is embedded in nature's principles, even as we exact more sunlight for ourselves in an over-organized, technological world. Mirroring this dichotomy, Michael Krger brings us The Seasonal Time Change, a collection of poems where an exacting eye is cast on nature. The poet's perspective is observant, stringent, and very human, bringing both intellect and emotion to the page. Translated by Joseph Given, the verses are in turn scrutinizing, wistful of the brutality of nature, and rejoicing in the simple wonder of life.
Bearing witness to Krger's interactions with renowned poets and artists through his time as director of Hanser publishing house, proximity and relationships are ongoing themes in this volume. Together, the poems remind us of our own mortality and of the finiteness of nature, but also our need for celebration even - perhaps especially - in times of darkness.
'Seasonal Time Change: Selected Poems, Kruger's latest book to be translated and published in English, presents almost exclusively short poems in which the beauty and iniquities of nature often mirror the unvarnished ironies of human endeavor, and is an accessible, excellent introduction to Kruger's poetry for an American readership. Most poems in Seasonal Time Change are well under a page, precise in image, deft, witty, and wryly jaundiced in their view of the poet's world caught between a desultory urban idyll and nature's unsentimental image.' - Rain Taxi
By:
Michael Krüger,
Michael Kruger
Translated by:
Joseph Given
Imprint: Seagull Books London Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 203mm,
Width: 127mm,
Spine: 10mm
ISBN: 9780857428271
ISBN 10: 0857428276
Series: The Seagull Library of German Literature
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 01 June 2023
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
I. My Desk in Allmanshausen Not a Haiku Postcard, May 2012 Three Winds, Pentecost May Near Münsing Long Conversation Crow-Eater I Cannot Divine What it Meaneth Wooden House Happiness Walk in the Woods A Friend Twilight The Last Day of August The Death of the Birch, 2011 Old Man under an Apple Tree Nights on the Terrace Photo Album Memory from School Class Reunion Poem Peripheral Symptoms of War II. In the Negev Hotel Malibran, Venice Hotel Near Erfurt Message, 2012 Hotel Europa Enlightenment Flight to Istanbul Harry Mulisch Hotel Il Patriarca Shame After the Rain Before the Storm Street Scene in a Foreign City Russian Cash Four Lines for Lalla Cinnamon On Seagulls Countryside Cafe National Museum in Calcutta India—Seven Postcards Programme Poetry The Hedgehog How Poems Happen Sleepless Copyright III. Old Wooden House A Poet (Untitled) In the Uckermark Lentils in New York Almost Nothing Lost Time Written from the Heart Istanbul Revisited Old Well Diel Walking, Slightly Moved Czeslaw, Milosz Translating Outdated What Still Has to be Done! Antonio Tabucchi is Dead Literarisches Colloquium, Berlin Nicolas Born Claude Simon A Reminder Whodunnit? A Mirror Tidying Up In the Shed IV. Snow New Year, 2012 New Year Winter Wretched Apples in February Snow Dreamer Dreamings Palm Sunday, 2012 Seedlings Beach Cafe Short Trip Summerhouse at Easter The Current State of Affairs, 2012 At the Lake Near Boston, at the Sea Expecting Rain Autumn At the Baltic Sea, Very Early Chiusi, Terre di Siena The Spider and I The Blackbird Early Sun in the South Cutting Grass End of the Summer Reverie Still Pool Clearing Notes
Michael Krger was the director of the Hanser Verlag from 1995 until his retirement in 2013. He has published many volumes of prose and poetry. Joseph Given is a Berlin-based literary translator.
Reviews for Seasonal Time Change: Selected Poems
Seasonal Time Change: Selected Poems, Kruger's latest book to be translated and published in English, presents almost exclusively short poems in which the beauty and iniquities of nature often mirror the unvarnished ironies of human endeavor, and is an accessible, excellent introduction to Kruger's poetry for an American readership. Most poems in Seasonal Time Change are well under a page, precise in image, deft, witty, and wryly jaundiced in their view of the poet's world caught between a desultory urban idyll and nature's unsentimental image. --Rain Taxi
