I’ve been reading a biography of the poet Paul Celan (1920-1970). I must confess my ignorance; I’d never read his poetry before. And I thought, for what turned out to be an explainable reason, that he was French. I was close – he lived in France for about the last 20 years of his life.
It was the biography, published this year by Anna Arno (and translated from the Polish,) that lead me to his poetry, which has been collected into two, rather large, volumes. Memory Rose into Threshold covers his early poems; Breathturn into Timestead covers the later poems. The two volumes are more than 700 pages each; pat of the reason is that the poems are published in both English and the language Celan wrote poetry in – German.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Photograph: Paul Celan in 1952.
Some Thursday Readings
[love is more thicker than forget], poem by E.E. Cummings – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
“Untamed Daughter,” poem by A.M Juster – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
“My House, I Say,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.
Quite Slowly – poem by Seth Lewis.
