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Ernst Meister (1911-1979) was born in Hagen, Germany, and studied first theology, then literature, art history, and philosophy (the latter under Karl Lwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer) at various German universities. After the publication of his first book in 1932, he published no poetry for two decades, a silent spell that ultimately gave way to the prolific last third of his life, over the course of which he produced more than sixteen volumes of verse as well as numerous other literary and visual works. Often compared to Paul Celan because of the brevity and difficulty of his poems, Meister tends toward a more abstract existentialism that renders his work both intensely emotional and inimitably strange. Having written outside the dominant literary circles of his time, he remains relatively unknown, though he was posthumously awarded the most prestigious award for German literature, the Georg Bchner Prize, having been informed of the honor just days before his death. Graham Foust and Samuel Frederick have translated Meister's informal trilogy which includes In Time's Rift (Wave Books, 2012), Wallless Space (Wave Books, 2014) and Of Entirety Say the Sentence (Wave Books, 2015). Graham Foust is the author of several collections of poetry, including A Mouth in California (Flood Editions, 2009) and To Anacreon in Heaven and Other Poems (Flood Editions, April 2013). He teaches at the University of Denver. With Samuel Frederick, he has translated three volumes of poetry by Ernst Meister, including In Time's Rift (Wave Books, 2012), Wallless Space (Wave Books, 2014), which was shortlisted for ALTA's National Poetry in Translation Award, and Of Entirety Say the Sentence (Wave Books, 2015). Samuel Frederick is the author of Narratives Unsettled: Digression in Robert Walser, Thomas Bernhard, and Adalbert Stifter (Northwestern University Press, 2012). He is an assistant professor of German at the Pennsylvania State University. With Graham Foust he has translated three volumes of poetry by Ernst Meister, including In Time's Rift (Wave Books, 2012), Wallless Space (Wave Books, 2014), which was shortlisted for ALTA's National Poetry in Translation Award, and Of Entirety Say the Sentence (Wave Books, 2015).
Poetry translation is such tricky and unappreciated work- translation is impossible, Graham Foust and Samuel Frederick declare in their introduction to a volume of Ernst Meister's work in which they've performed that exact miracle. -Arielle Greenberg, American Poetry Review Like his subject matter, Meister's writing is ominous, intangible, and inescapable. -Publishers Weekly Meister compacts a meditation on the nature of space, nothingness and our interaction with the two in the work's sparse, dense lines. -Lindsay Choi, The Daily Californian
