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Psyche Running: Selected Poems, 2005–2022
A dazzling selection of more than one hundred poems that trace the development of Durs Grünbein’s work over the past two decades.
Born in Dresden in 1962, Durs Grünbein is the most significant and successful poet of his generation in Germany. Since 1988, when the then-twenty-five-year-old burst onto the scene with his poetry collection Grauzone morgens —a mordant reckoning with the East Germany he grew up in—Grünbein has published more than thirty books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
In 2005 the volume Ashes for Breakfast introduced Grünbein to English-language readers for the first time by sampling poetry from his first four collections. Psyche Running picks up where that volume left off and offers a selection of poems from his nine subsequent collections, which shows how Grünbein has developed from his ironic take on the classical into an elegiac exploration of history through dream fragments and poems with a haunting existential unease.
Born in Dresden in 1962, Durs Grünbein is the most significant and successful poet of his generation in Germany. Since 1988, when the then-twenty-five-year-old burst onto the scene with his poetry collection Grauzone morgens —a mordant reckoning with the East Germany he grew up in—Grünbein has published more than thirty books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
In 2005 the volume Ashes for Breakfast introduced Grünbein to English-language readers for the first time by sampling poetry from his first four collections. Psyche Running picks up where that volume left off and offers a selection of poems from his nine subsequent collections, which shows how Grünbein has developed from his ironic take on the classical into an elegiac exploration of history through dream fragments and poems with a haunting existential unease.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published May 6, 2024
33 people want to read
About the author
Durs Grünbein
100 books22 followersDurs Grünbein is a German poet, essayist and translator living in Berlin since 1985.
Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995. That same year, he also won the Peter Huchel Prize for Poetry.
In 2005, he held the position of Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.
In 2006, Grünbein was elected by the academy of fine arts at Düsseldorf to the first chair of poetry (poetics and artistic aesthetics) at any German university or academy. Grünbein is a regular contributor to Frau und Hund - Zeitschrift für kursives Denken, edited by the academy's rector, the painter Markus Lüpertz.
Grünbein has also published several essay collections and new translations of plays from antiquity, among them Aeschylus' The Persians, and Seneca's Thyestes. His work, which also includes contributions to catalogues and a libretto for opera, has been translated into many languages.
Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995. That same year, he also won the Peter Huchel Prize for Poetry.
In 2005, he held the position of Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.
In 2006, Grünbein was elected by the academy of fine arts at Düsseldorf to the first chair of poetry (poetics and artistic aesthetics) at any German university or academy. Grünbein is a regular contributor to Frau und Hund - Zeitschrift für kursives Denken, edited by the academy's rector, the painter Markus Lüpertz.
Grünbein has also published several essay collections and new translations of plays from antiquity, among them Aeschylus' The Persians, and Seneca's Thyestes. His work, which also includes contributions to catalogues and a libretto for opera, has been translated into many languages.
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April 14, 2025
The poems collected here are chosen from nine collections spanning 17 years and building on Grünbein's poetic themes—the aftermath of WWII (especially the destruction of his native Dresden), postwar politics in East Germany, Roman history, mythology, and the landscapes surrounding his two current homes—Berlin and Rome. The selection is generous (including many of the poems from his volume about Dresden, Porcelain, which I have read), and translator Karen Leeder's introduction and Notes are invaluable. Grünbein is, I would say, a poet whose work can be appreciated by a wide audience.
I will have more thoughts to come.
I will have more thoughts to come.
Displaying 1 of 1 review