Michael Hofmann is a celebrated poet and translator whose work is marked by its sharp insights into the human condition and masterful command of language. His poetry and essays delve into the intricate relationships between culture, identity, and memory, often with a wry wit and profound empathy. Hofmann's range as a translator is remarkable, encompassing both classic and contemporary works, wherein he skillfully captures the unique voice and spirit of the original texts. His writings are admired for their intellectual depth and poetic grace.
The first poem in Gottfried Benn's first book, Morgue (1912) - written in an hour, published in a week, and notorious ever after, or so the poet claimed - with its scandalous closing image of an aster sewn into a corpse by a playful medical student, set him on his celebrated path.
Exploring the relationship between a reader and literature, the essays in this collection provide sharp insights to help readers appreciate and reconsider various writers. Michael Hofmann, known for his critical acumen, offers guidance on what to read and how to engage with texts, all while sharing his personal journey and affection for books. Through his reflections, readers are invited to deepen their understanding of contemporary literature and the joy it can bring.
Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the nervous Frau Rosenthal, the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm, and the unassuming working-class couple Otto and Anna Quangel.
A new translation of one of the most important and readable novels in the German language
This collection of poems touches on personal and political watersheds and examines various kinds of patrimony. It is characterized by a drastic honesty and rhythmic force.
Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the great works in classical literature, and a primary source for our knowledge of much of classic mythology, in which the relentless theme of transformation stands as a primary metaphor for the often cataclysmic dynamics of life itself. For this book, British poets Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun have invited more than forty leading English-language poets to create their own idiomatic contemporary versions of some of the most famous and notorious myths from the Metamorphoses. Apollo and Daphne, Pyramus and Thisbe, Proserpina, Marsyas, Medea, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice--these and many other immortal tales are given fresh and startling life in exciting new versions. The contributors--among them Fleur Adcock, Amy Clampitt, Jorie Graham, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Lawrence Joseph, Kenneth Koch, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Les Murray, Robert Pinsky, Frederick Seidel, Charles Simic, and C. K. Williams--constitute an impressive roster of today's major poets. After Ovid is a powerful re-envisioning of a fundamental work of literature as well as a remarkable affirmation of the current state of poetry in English.
Approaching his sixtieth birthday, the poet explores where he finds himself, geographically and in life, treating with wit and compassion such universal themes as ageing and memory, place, and the difficulty for the individual to exist at all in an ever bigger and more bestial world.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRLWELLOne morning, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. His family is understandably perturbed and he finds himself an outsider in his own home. In Metamorphosis and the other famous st
Thomas Bernhard combined a searing wit and an unwavering gaze into the human condition. His debut novel, Frost, marked the beginning of one of the century’s most provocative literary careers. Visceral, raw, singular, and unforgettable, Frost is the story of a friendship between a young man beginning his medical career and a painter in his final days. The youth has accepted an unusual assignment, to travel to a miserable mining town in the middle of nowhere in order to clinically—and secretly—observe and report on his mentor’s reclusive brother, the painter Strauch. Carefully disguising himself as a law student with a love of Henry James, he befriends the aging artist and attempts to carry out his mission, only to find himself caught up in his subject’s apparent madness.
Depicts the tragicomic misadventures of a young immigrant in New York.
