The Bars of Atlantis - by Durs Grünbein (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"American readers who'd like not to be caught off guard the next time the Nobel goes out to the German-speaking world (Elfriede who? Herta what?) may do well to acquaint themselves with the work of Durs Grünbein. I can think of nowhere better to start than The Bars of Atlantis, a book of essays every bit as vibrant, witty, erudite, and awe-inspiring as Grünbein's incomparable poetry." --Jeffrey Eugenides

"What was it in Grünbein that so seized my attention? It was the sardonic humor, the savagery, the violent candor-all expressed in lines of cool formal elegance. In Grünbein's pages, uncontrollable feeling encounters the at first invisible control of an expert technique, creating that exciting 'deadlock' of equally strong matter and manner that Robert Frost in his Notebooks found essential to poetry." --Helen Vendler, The New Republic on Ashes for Breakfast

"Ashes for Breakfast is a brilliantly layered book . . . Grünbein's poems read as if the forces of history pressing in on the present drove them into this world." --Melanie Rehak, The New York Times Book Review on Ashes for Breakfast

"Durs Grünbein is one of the most intelligent poets writing in German today. His subject is nothing less than 'this life, so useless, so rich.' It is wonderful to have his selected poems in Michael Hofmann's note-perfect translation." --John Ashbery on Ashes for Breakfast

"Durs Grünbein is a highly original poet, an heir to the riches of German and European Modernism. What's striking in this poetry is a hard, almost cynical tone which turns out to be just a lid on a jar containing many substances." --Adam Zagajewski on Ashes for Breakfast

"Grünbein is a vital new voice in the world of poetry . . . Like Joseph Brodsky, to whom he is often compared, he is a serious and focused poet whose work has a depth that deserves our attention." --David Hellman, San Francisco Chronicle on Ashes for Breakfast