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just sitting around here GRUESOMELY now
Poetic prose meditations written in a lyrical stream-of-consciousness style by renowned Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker.
It is summer in this book, even if nature often does not hold to summer. The flowers either have tiny buds or have long since withered. It is summer in the book, asserts Mayröcker’s work, because the summer light is switched sometimes blazingly bright, sometimes darkened with thunderclouds. At the same time, there is a magical light in this writing. In these stream-of-conscious prose poem meditations, Mayröcker formulates a poetics of simultaneity of all that is “not the scenes I remember, rather, it is the sensations accompanying those scenes.”
Strictly composed in form and language while luxuriantly proliferated in daydreams and nightmares, just sitting around here GRUESOMELY now is a significant volume in the radical late work of the great Viennese poet.
It is summer in this book, even if nature often does not hold to summer. The flowers either have tiny buds or have long since withered. It is summer in the book, asserts Mayröcker’s work, because the summer light is switched sometimes blazingly bright, sometimes darkened with thunderclouds. At the same time, there is a magical light in this writing. In these stream-of-conscious prose poem meditations, Mayröcker formulates a poetics of simultaneity of all that is “not the scenes I remember, rather, it is the sensations accompanying those scenes.”
Strictly composed in form and language while luxuriantly proliferated in daydreams and nightmares, just sitting around here GRUESOMELY now is a significant volume in the radical late work of the great Viennese poet.
148 pages, Paperback
Published July 6, 2023
2 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
Friederike Mayröcker
110 books53 followersFriederike Mayröcker (born 20 December 1924 in Vienna) is an Austrian poet. From 1946 to 1969 Mayröcker was an English teacher at several public schools in Vienna. In 1969 she took a release from working as a teacher and in 1977 she retired early.
She started writing as a 15-year-old. In 1946, she meet Otto Basil who published some of her first works in his avant-garde journal Plan. Mayröcker's poems were published a few years later by renowned literary critic Hans Weigel. She was eventually introduced to the Wiener Gruppe, a group of mostly surrealist and expressionist Austrian authors.
Friederike Mayröcker is recognized as one of the most important contemporary Austrian poets. She also had success with her prose and radio plays. Four of them she wrote together with Ernst Jandl, with whom she lived together from 1954 until his death in 2000.
Her prose is often described as autofictional, since Mayröcker uses quotes of private conversations and excerpts from letters and diaries in her work.
Mayröcker describes her working process as follows: "I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language."
A German biographical movie documenting Mayröcker's life and work was released in 2008
She started writing as a 15-year-old. In 1946, she meet Otto Basil who published some of her first works in his avant-garde journal Plan. Mayröcker's poems were published a few years later by renowned literary critic Hans Weigel. She was eventually introduced to the Wiener Gruppe, a group of mostly surrealist and expressionist Austrian authors.
Friederike Mayröcker is recognized as one of the most important contemporary Austrian poets. She also had success with her prose and radio plays. Four of them she wrote together with Ernst Jandl, with whom she lived together from 1954 until his death in 2000.
Her prose is often described as autofictional, since Mayröcker uses quotes of private conversations and excerpts from letters and diaries in her work.
Mayröcker describes her working process as follows: "I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language."
A German biographical movie documenting Mayröcker's life and work was released in 2008
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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August 12, 2025Im sure this is what a flower would sound like if it could speak
December 15, 2022
This is probably one of the weirdest, and one of the most magical, things I've ever read.
It came into my life through a wrong search on inter-library loan for research articles. A month later this collection came, bare hardback, with no description of the author or a blurb and only 4 goodreads reviews . I read it for 2 days on the train and had a transformative experience--the author's ability to notice things in this weird prose poetry style is brilliant.
I think I'll keep the magic as this and continue knowing nothing except this marvelous text.
It came into my life through a wrong search on inter-library loan for research articles. A month later this collection came, bare hardback, with no description of the author or a blurb and only 4 goodreads reviews . I read it for 2 days on the train and had a transformative experience--the author's ability to notice things in this weird prose poetry style is brilliant.
I think I'll keep the magic as this and continue knowing nothing except this marvelous text.
March 10, 2024
a stream (or multiple therein) of conciousness(es)..... entranced i was and am
June 15, 2024
Fan(f-ing)tastic. After the slog of Batuman’s ‘Idiot’ I was all too ready to sink into this f-ing gorgeous murky mysterious writing. A Saturday morning miracle. My first Mayrocker but definitely not my last.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews