Michael Hofmann Books

This anthology showcases a diverse range of German poetry, featuring renowned poets like Rilke, Brecht, and contemporary voices such as Durs Grunbein and Jan Wagner. It highlights poetry as a powerful response to socio-political issues, encompassing themes of dissent, personal grief, and historical reflection. The collection captures the evolution of German verse from the complexities of its past to the introspection of a reunified nation, making it an essential resource for understanding the cultural and emotional landscape of a tumultuous century.

German has produced some of the giants of twentieth century European poetry. This book guides us through the poems, poets and themes of German verse.

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.

Michael Hofmann's poems have been widely admired, notably for their gift of compressed and vividly pointed reportage, and the collision course of words and dictions that his poetry characteristically provokes.

A new selection of essays from Michael Hofmann - one of our most exceptional critics of contemporary literature. In essays on art that are themselves works of art, Hofmann's agile and brilliant mind explores a panoply of subjects from the mastery of translation to the best day job for a poet.

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

Exploring the intricacies of sexual tension, Hofmann's poetry delves into the emotional landscape where feelings are depicted as complex and often painful rather than simple poetic devices. The emphasis on the physical act of smiling serves as a poignant reminder of the deeper emotional experiences that underpin human connections. Through vivid imagery and thought-provoking themes, the work invites readers to reflect on the multifaceted nature of desire and intimacy.

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.