The Bars of Atlantis
Selected Essays
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This landmark collection of essays by one of the world's greatest living authors makes Durs Grünbein's wide-ranging and multifaceted prose available in English for the first time, and is a welcome complement to Ashes for Breakfast, his first book-length collection of poetry in English.
Covering two decades, The Bars of Atlantis unfurls the entire breadth and depth of Grünbein's essayistic genius. Memoiristic and autobiographical pieces that introduce Grünbein, the man and the author, and tell the story of the making of a poet and thinker toward the end of a century marked by global political strife, unprecedented human suffering, long decades of totalitarian rule, and, in its final quarter, the dawn of a new, post–Cold War world order; essays that focus on Grünbein's major philosophical and aesthetic concerns, such as the intersection of art and science, literature and biology; extended reflections on the existential, cultural, political, and ethical import of the poet's craft in the contemporary world; and, finally, explorations of the meaning of classical antiquity for the present—all contribute to making.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A map of poet and essayist Gr nbein's mind using markers from these essays might plot a path from his native Dresden, where a mountain of garbage was the source of his poetry, through Sienna's Piazza del Campo, the town square that has most inspired him, down to oceanic depths and its denizens, the oldest designs on the theme of 'fish,' and to mythical Atlantis. As Gr nbein (Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems) ranges from biology through history, architecture, metaphysics, language, and literature, his quirky humor is revealed by incisive juxtapositions. He confirms evolution's politics of thrift by comparing crabs' vestigial eyes with a broken-down bus converted to a dwelling in a Third World slum. The translators, poets themselves, render Gr nbein's thoughts into expressive, fast-paced passages. Gr nbein describes poetry as lessons in accelerated consciousness and a novel in fragmentary form. He provides pyrotechnics aplenty in this remarkable collection. 6 b&w illus.
