Études - (The Seagull Library of German Literature) by Friederike Mayröcker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A diary-like sequence of poems from one of Austria's best-known contemporary voices.

Exploring longing, lust for life, aging, mortality, grief, and flowers in her inimitable late style, études is a diary-like sequence of poems by one of the greatest living Austrian poets. Friederike Mayröcker's almost daily entries give us a unique view into the interplay between desire and her motivation for writing. In Mayröcker's case, she writes both to keep a vanished world present and to exploit the possibilities of being present for constant experimentation.

The poems in this volume are not only studies of how the mind works, moving from fragment to fragment, but also experiments with techniques of repetition, typography, collage, and quotation. Mayröcker transforms the humble page into spaces of radical openness. After all, she says, a poem is that which "opens everything up." Each poem is date-stamped, and each date acts as a kind of permission for Mayröcker to pour in everything from notes on doctor's visits to gorgeously structured elegies to obsessively repeating fragments of memory that act upon the whole like bits of recurring melody.

Rarely before has the intimate process of writing been so exquisitely laid bare than in études. Traversing the boundaries of literary forms with Mayröcker's distinctive style, this important volume strikes an admirable balance between playfulness and serious inquiry.

Review Quotes

"A hybrid between poetry and prose. . . a close observational space where [Mayröcker] continues to explore ageing, mortality and grief, with almost daily entries beginning in 2010 and ending in 2011, every piece title-less, with dates at the bottom. Études are also short musical compositions, often vigorously complex pieces of music practiced again and again to perfect a particular skill, until they become automatic, inherent, life-breathing. And so Mayröcker's interest in translating a kind of musical experience through word-sounds on the page continues, her own daily practice, as always, tireless."-- "PN Review"

"Mayröcker's dense, allusive poetry, with all its alternatively beatific and disconsolate language, can be seen as a culmination of the European cultural tradition... richly passionate, elegiac, and mystically personal." -- "Rain Taxi"

About the Author

Friederike Mayröcker is widely considered one of the most important Austrian poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She has published over eighty works since 1956, including poetry, prose, radio plays, and children's books. She lives in Vienna. Donna Stonecipher is the author of five books of poetry and one of prose. She has translated works from Ludwig Hohl, Alexander Kluge, and Friederike Mayröcker. She lives in Berlin.