Wisp - by Jan Wagner & David Keplinger (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A dual-language collection examining impermanence as the source of beauty from one of the most acclaimed contemporary poets writing in German.

Over the course of a partnership spanning nearly two decades, poets Jan Wagner and David Keplinger have crafted a distinctly collaborative exchange between original German and American letters. Now, in this masterful dual-language poetry collection, they muse at the constraints of translation, challenging its boundaries while weaving their distinct voices in lyrical call and response. Together, they marvel at what translation can be: a tempered conversation in metered rhyme.

From their poetic cross-pollination, ethereal wisps unfurl from everyday objects--a spiral of hair, an iridescent snail's path, the twist of a tornado's funnel. Flora and fauna, they discover, act as foliage to veiled, hidden universes. Flamingoes curve into question marks, fishhooks become wedding rings, and Pirelli tires glide into panthers. "She trails a silver-tail / behind herself," the speaker muses, "something like a falling / star."

Showcasing traditional forms--including ghazal, sonnet, and haiku--Wagner and Keplinger rebel against each fixed container until otherworldly realms emerge. Kaleidoscopic and cyclical, these poems are a feat of literary acrobatics on display, suspending us in surprise and wonder.

Review Quotes

"Jan Wagner's stunning collection in its original German demands this translation. David Keplinger's meticulous rendition stays true to Wagner's cauldron of images voiced by the speaker's psyche--wrought in a precise magic that amplifies inner and outer worlds, where human imagination acts upon nature. Through metaphor the poet confronts the reader--'the audience, beside themselves, agog.' Each trope in Wisp is a revelation."--Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Neon Vernacular

"Jan Wagner's poems enchant the commonplace: radishes sprout as Apollos, flamingos bend into question marks, a saw bites with piranha teeth. Nothing holds still. And David Keplinger casts a responsive spell in English. At a touch of his translator's wand, rhymes and wordplay spring into new song shapes, and the reader, bewitched, becomes 'an unraveled traveler' in this youthful, revelatory, and metamorphic German poetry."--Rosanna Warren, author of So Forth

About the Author

Jan Wagner is a German poet, essayist, and translator. His collections of poems include Guerickes Sperling, Achtzehn Pasteten, Australien, and Regentonnenvariationen, for which he was awarded the Prize of the Leipzig Bookfair. The Art of Topiary is the most recent translation of Wagner's work into English. The editor of two influential anthologies of German language poetry, including, with the poet Björn Kuhligk, Poetry of the Now: 74 Voices, Wagner is also the German translator of several British and American poets, including James Tate, Matthew Sweeney, and Charles Simic. He is the recipient of the Mondsee Poetry Award, the Anna Seghers Award, the Ernst Meister Award for Poetry, the Mörike Preis, and the first Arno Reinfrank Award. In 2017, he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize. A member of the German Academy of Language and Literature, he currently lives in Berlin.

David Keplinger is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Another City, which was awarded the 2019 UNT Rilke Prize, and Ice, which won the 2024 Ellen Anderson Award from the Poetry Society of Virginia. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Colorado Book Award, the T.S. Eliot Award, the Minds on Fire Award, the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and other honors. His six volumes of literary translation include Jan Wagner's The Art of Topiary and Carsten René Nielsen's Forty-One Objects, which was longlisted for the 2020 National Translation Prize. In 2022 American University named him Teacher-Scholar of the Year. In 2025, he was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He lives in Washington, D.C.