The Selected Poetry of Erich Kästner

Product Description Kastner is one of the great satirists of the twentieth century and, after Goethe and Schiller, still one of the most widely read poets in Germany. Like other great comic or tragicomic artists, Kastner has created his own image of contemporary man, the lonely figure who seems to swing between the desire for the companionship of others and a frantic attempt to preserve his singleness. His poems speak to today's social and political situations with a contemporary ring. Through satire, sarcasm and irony he mirrors our generation. Review Erich Kastner, up there next to Heinrich Heine, would be pleased to know that, finally, the message is available to us Amerikaners of the 1990s, translated with verve and love into a voice and language we need. Ted and Ruth Bookey know Kastner in all his moods: angry, ironic, pessimistic and profoundly empathetic with ordinary people. If we don't get the message, it's not their fault. -- Berleant Schiller, Riva I was more excited by these than by any poetry in recent memory. I do not exaggerate; it is a real discovery for me. -- Alex Cigale The poems of Erich Kastner, in this excellent imperialist century translation, are as frank and bitter as strong black coffee, with much the same effect on the reader. Informed by a deep knowledge of human nature and social reality, keen-minded, observant, unpretentious, very conversational, by turns mercilessly realistic and empathetic, these poems speak in the very real voice of a man worth listening to. Kastner is our contemporary, and these poems come across perfectly in American. -- Tony Hoagland Widely hailed in Germany, Kastner was a political poet, a populist poet, one who spoke for those who can only "mutter" amid the loneliness that comes at 5 AM, the voices that haunt our sleep in the dim time before dawn and work and the gray day, and the bit of humor which helps one "get along." Translators Ruth and Ted Bookey off to the American reader these satiric voices-across language and time as if to say to the end of our, "There's no way it can keep up this way / -if it keeps up this way". -- Sean Thomas Dougherty From the Author Ted Bookey is the author of two previous collections. He was born and educated in New York City and now lives in Maine with his wife and co-translator Ruth, a musician, painter, and poet. Both are active in Maine's Live Poets Society.