Sulla terra e sull’acqua: Poesie scelte 1964-2001

by W.G. Sebald

«Il mio mezzo espressivo è la prosa» ha dichiarato Sebald nel 1997, suffragando così l’opinione di chi vedeva in lui soprattutto un grande narratore e saggista. In realtà la poesia era stata la sua prima vocazione, e aveva poi continuato a coltivarla – un fiume sotterraneo che affiora in sporadiche pubblicazioni e si manifesta pienamente solo nel sostanzioso lascito di carte. Una produzione, quella del Sebald poeta, rimasta dunque in buona parte celata e ora finalmente tornata alla luce, dai primi versi giovanili sino alle ultime liriche del 2001. Vi si aggirano le stesse figure che abitano capolavori come «Vertigini» o «Gli anelli di Saturno», e che, svincolate dal meccanismo della prosa, si impongono al lettore con l’evanescenza di immagini oniriche («un canale d’acqua ferma / una barca alla proda / il cacciatore Gracco / ha già toccato terra»). Tutt’intorno, i freddi luoghi del viaggio – sale d’attesa, aeroporti, camere d’albergo –, la folla dei toponimi e le ultime tracce della natura, travolta dall’«ago magnetico» della ragione, che «la nave sospinge / fino allo schianto». Sotto lo sguardo benevolo degli animali e delle costellazioni, l’unico in cui si intravede un barlume di salvezza, Sebald si cala negli abissi di sogno e memoria, per riportare in superficie questi versi in cui echeggia «il suono delle stelle e / la vastità del silenzio / sopra la neve e i boschi».

Genres: Poetry, German Literature, Germany, Literature, Fiction

131 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. His works are largely concerned with the themes of memory, loss of memory, and identity (both personal and collective) and decay (of civilizations, traditions or physical objects). They are, in particular, attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people.

At the time of his death at the age of only 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and was tipped as a possible future recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH



Ci vuole davvero poco per riconoscere la scrittura di Sebald, il suo ritmo crepuscolare, la sua energica curiosità, il suo errare e divagare, le sue digressioni erudite, quegli istanti curiosamente dilatati, di cui ci si ricorda ancora dopo anni.
Può essere questo o quello, prima o dopo, la Corsica come in questo caso, un cimitero, una spiaggia, un cancello, un museo, una fotografia.
E, sempre, instancabile, la mente di Sebald, e del lettore, vaga, perlustra, spazia, scruta, dilata. La sua scrittura ipnotica sembra disinteressata alla trama, ma tesa a comporre una prosa dove ogni parola è attentamente e accuratamente scelta e inserita.
Sebald cammina, nuota, si siede, si arrampica, passeggia. Ci dà le spalle, ci regala il suo punto di vista.



Sono frammenti, tasselli di un più vasto lavoro incompiuto dedicato alla splendida isola mediterranea. Nell’edizione originale, intitolata “Campo santo”, i testi di argomento corso sono accompagnati da altri più strettamente critico-letterari, saggi dedicati ad autori come Nabokov, Kafka, Grass, Handke, Chatwin, precedentemente pubblicati in rivista.



Attraverso queste vite Sebald sembra voler simulare su pagina, amplificandola, quella parte di realtà segreta, invisibile, arcana e impenetrabile che sfugge ai più. E a questo scopo moltiplica i materiali d’analisi. Cuce insieme testimonianze, cartoline, racconti, mappe, descrizioni, diari, ritagli di giornali, fotografie, perché nulla sfugga al suo occhio d’investigatore, ben consapevole, in linea con le intuizioni di Robert Musil, che se esiste un senso della realtà deve esistere anche un senso della possibilità, ossia quel tipo particolare di sensibilità o d’indole creativa che consiste nella capacità di pensare, rispetto a qualsiasi cosa esistente, “a tutto ciò che potrebbe essere, e di non ritenere ciò che è più importante di ciò che non è ”.
In questo senso Sebald, è senza dubbio un uomo senza qualità. Un uomo cioè, che come il resto degli europei non è immune al trauma della violenza contenuta in qualsiasi processo di civilizzazione. Ma che ampliando l’orizzonte della realtà con le trame invisibili della possibilità notano che nella verità possibile, così come nell’ordalia e nell’alternanza perenne tra vita e morte esiste “un fuoco, un’esaltazione, un proposito costruttivo e un consapevole utopismo che non fugge la realtà, ma la tratta piuttosto come un compito e un’invenzione.“
Perché sia possibile, anche nel trauma, scorgere la luccicanza del bello, e su quei riverberi, fondare l’illusione della rinascita.
Giancarlo Liviano D’Arcangelo su “Nuovi Argomenti”


Fotografia di Richard Tuschman.

[Atri · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intention is
sealed
of preserved
signs.
Come through
rain
the address has
smudged.
Suppose the
"return"
at the end of the
letter!
Sometimes, held
to the light,
it reads: "of the
soul."

***

The valley resounds
With the sound of the stars
With the vast stillness
Over snow and forest.

***

The French windows
Are open still
As if in the theatre
People wait
On the colours of the carpet
In the cadence of dusk
...

Time measures
Nothing but itself
...

One leaves behind one's portrait
Without intent

***

A little way
further upstream
up at the Hain
Park Schorsch
and Rosa are taking
a stroll one August
afternoon in '43
she in a light

dust-cloak he
with his traditional jacket
slung over his
shoulder. They
both seem happy
to me, carefree
at least and a good
deal younger than
I am now.

Thus, ...
floweth time
a ruby red
cipher leaping
from digit to digit
trickling
in silence

from the dark
of night
to the gray
of dawn
just as sand
once ran
through
the hour
glass.

***

In Alfermée

late in November
the rain sweeps
down from the Jura
throughout the night

Threading sleep
letter by letter
comes a language
you do not understand

The exhausted eyes
of the writer the fingers
of one hand on the
keys of her machine

Darkness lifts
from the earth in the morning
leaving no difference
between lake and air

Along the shore
is a row of poplars
behind them a lone boat
at a buoy

Beyond the gray
water invisible
through swaths of mist
the village of Sutz

a few lights
going out &
a column of snow-
white smoke

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several of my German speaking friends have told me about the singular poetry of Sebald, but it has been very hard to find his poems translated in English. This book has opened a new 'poetry door' for me; simple yet complex observations that seem in constant motion - taking you along the current of life. Will look for more works by this unique poet.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

White fields
in winter sometimes
strewn with ash

The high shoulder of the hill
stunted conifers
juniper shrubs
rock tomb
one-eyed sheep

Overtaken by ruin
a Wilhelmine artisan mill
reflects the breadlessness
of the passing trains

Deposited between layers
lie the winged
vertebrates
of prehistory

[sigurd · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'idea che la memoria appartenga ai luoghi e sia radicata in essi non è un'idea di Sebald, ma dei greci, come ci ha fatto notare Siri Hustvedt. Ed è un'idea che esercitò una certa influenza in tutto il pensiero medievale, tanto da far dire ad Alberto Magno: "Il luogo è qualcosa che l'anima stessa crea per poggiarvi immagini". E tanto più queste anime sono nobili, cortesi, gentili verso il creato, altamente disposte a concedere all'essere spiragli di benvenuto, così il risultato di quei luoghi creati è miracoloso: la Corsica di Sebald è meno la Corsica che la terra favolosa del prete gianni.
Durante questo trasporto, l'errare di Sebald per noi è un profondo immedesirmarsi nella sue stesse circostanze, è essere ammessi allo spazio del suo ragionamento.
Il suo tatto spirituale ci sorprende e ci ammette nel suo largo raggio , così che possiamo dire con Emerson che «quel che un santo sente, possiamo sentirlo anche noi; quel che Platone pensa, possiamo pensarlo anche noi».
Nondimento quel che Sebald vede e tocca, è qui, davanti ai nostri occhi.

19 aprile 2017

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 'Over het land en het water' zijn voor het eerst alle gedichten verzameld die tijdens Sebalds leven op verschillende plaatsen werden gepubliceerd in het Duits, met uitzondering van de boeken 'Nach der Natur' en 'Unerzählt'. Die aanvankelijke verzameling werd aangevuld met een keuze uit ongepubliceerde gedichten, gebaseerd op Sebalds nalatenschap. Met andere woorden: deze korte, maar oh zo krachtige bundel, is zo veel meer dan een 'leesuitgave', het is een literair bommetje. Maar in de eerste plaats het poëtisch testament van een dichter die onderweg moeite had om zich als dichter te profileren en die, hoewel hij vanaf het begin aan verzen verknocht was, vooral naam maakte als groot essayist en de huldebrenger van het gebrekkige menselijke geheugen. Liefhebbers van Sebalds melancholische en weemoedige proza zullen niet teleurgesteld zijn door deze trage, gebalde, luisterrijke en weidse poëzie.

[piperitapitta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nuotando nella notte.

In una notte d'inverno, quando fuori la pioggia cade piano e i tuoni rimbombano in lontananza, ricordarsi seduta in un pomeriggio di settembre con una limonata asprissima fra le mani sui tetti di Sant'Antoninu - la costa Ovest, quella che preferisco - e trovarsi a guardare la Corsica con gli occhi di Sebald.
La storia, le credenze e le usanze dell'uomo, la natura, il mare; alle spalle le Alpi, le «Dolomiti corse», quei picchi innevati anche fino a primavera inoltrata, di fronte il mare, ora azzurro, ora verde smeraldo, ora celeste trasparente e le distese di sabbia bianca, di ciottoli neri, i sassolini rossi, in un'infinità varietà di forme e colori, con lo sguardo volto all'orizzonte e all'infinito, sospesa tra cielo e mare.
Quattro frammenti di un viaggio mai terminato estratti da un'opera non ancora tradotta nella sua interezza, «Campo Santo», che in poco più di settanta pagine, intense e dense di contenuti - contenuti che come al solito in Sebald spaziano dall'architettura alla botanica e dalla Storia alle tradizioni popolari alla Letteratura - restituiscono una Corsica che con Napoleone visse di gloria riflessa divenendo improvvisamente grande e maestosa, capace di svelarsi nelle improvvise acque cristalline e nelle baie protette ora da calanches ora da lunghi tratti desertici ma che nel contempo, per la sua natura di isola impervia e inaccessibile, è scrigno che custodisce misteri, ombre, rituali svelati e raccontati malvolentieri, foreste talmente fitte, molto spesso purtroppo distrutte nel tempo dall'uomo, da poter essere penetrate solo dagli animali selvatici, o dall'odore pungente del mirto. Oppure, alla fine, dal fuoco.
Una terra, quella inaspettatamente aspra e impervia dell'interno, che diventa interno a pochissimi chilometri dal mare, che coincide con la mancata disposizione d'animo, mai celata dai suoi abitanti, di chiusura verso lo straniero, francese o italiano che sia, dove a ogni esplosione, anche la più piccola e sorda, può corrispondere un incendio, un gruppo di cacciatori che si sono inoltrati nel maquis, la fulcina che arriva con la falce in pugno per portare qualcuno con sé nel regno dei morti, una bomba lanciata nella notte dagli indipendentisti, oppure un sussulto dell'anima.
Dovunque tu vada - sembra dire Sebald, mi viene in mente prendendo in prestito il titolo di un saggio di Kabat-Zinn - tu ci sei già.
Io ci sono, e se il mio amore per la Corsica è di vecchia data e stabile nel mio cuore, quello per Sebald è in crescita costante.

«Quando poi però, obbedendo a quell'istinto singolare che ci lega alla vita, feci dietro front per riguadagnare la terra, che da laggiù pareva un continente ignoto, bracciata dopo bracciata nuotavo sempre più a fatica, e non già per la sensazione di procedere contro corrente, quella corrente che mi aveva portato fin lì; no, mi sembrava piuttosto, s si può dir così per una distesa d'acqua, di risalire un pendio.»

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sebald is kind a melancholy German version of Jorge Luis Borges. Like Borges, a fellow bibliophile, he was drawn to writing about arcane old books that almost nobody else reads anymore, or to topics (like firebombings in German memory, or the back roads of Corsica) that might be deliberately overlooked by a calculated amnesia. Like Borges, too, he was mostly known for his prose but was a killer poet.

His poems should be read with the notes at the end of this book, which are a fascinating look at the sources of this enigmatic gold mine. Sebald had a voracious hunger for unusual bits of history, folklore, and scattered poetry in old books and paintings. Which other recent European writers would mine the Quaker "naive" painter Edward Hicks for poetry? Which would be so captivated by the language of an American Shaker abecedarium of 1882? Sebald goes down well-known and little-known paths. He traces Kafka's footsteps, for sure -- then we find him quoting an obscure 17th-century Jesuit who invented an early form of braille, or astronomers, or botanists. (The second part of After Nature, another fabulous book of poetry by Sebald, is about the German naturalist Georg Steller, who went with Vitus Bering to Siberia and Alaska in the 1700s and died in misery there. I love that Sebald mines this man's abysmal subarctic fate for another delicious ounce of his characteristically melancholy perspective on the world -- which never annoys, since Sebald's melancholy, even when private, is thickly woven around other people's miseries, vicarious experience and tragedies that he latches onto to express some of his own perspective on life, and therefore is far more interesting than the yawningly self-reflexive ache of most contemporary poetry.

Yet like Borges' poetry, the "personality" of Sebald's sadness is not only based on academic, bookish wanderings, but transfixes in a way not ultimately intellectual. Sebald famously seeds some red-blooded emotion into what could have turned into distanced literary criticism or mere travelogue. And his poems take anything but a back seat to his better-known prose. The poetry and prose come from the same fantastics and often overlooked sources.

The titles alone are riveting. "Eerie Effects of the Hell Valley Wind On My Nerves" (about Daniel Paul Schreber's belief that God was slowly turning him into a woman, a case studied by Freud and Jung.) And this, from "Trigonometry of the Spheres" (like the German Romantic Novalis, Sebald is a great poet of the night):

"And once he said do not forget
the north wind brings
light from the house of Aries
to the apple trees"

[M. Sarki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing much to say about this book other than Sebald's own wish to remembered for his prose. These bits were mostly just pen put to paper, a recording of words more reportage than anything resembling fine poetry.

[Andrew]

If Across the Land and Water had been a late '90s hip-hop album, it would have been called "W.G. Sebald: Da Resurrection," collecting odds and ends from his early career, post-mortem. And, q.v. Biggie on Born Again, it mixes outright bangers with a few half-thoughts, and it's nothing like his fully thought-out masterpieces. But it's still got that moody, archival, neurasthenic Sebald vibe I love so much, even if it is in a condensed and fragmented form.

[Xavier Roelens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ezra Pound in het klein. Als je hier een kern kunt uithalen voor Sebalds werk, dan is het wel zijn verlangen om de verschillende historische en culturele lagen onderliggend aan de ons omringende werkelijkheid met elkaar te verbinden. Je ziet hem in deze ruime selectie van zijn poëzie, die grofweg uit drie hier bijeen gebracht bundels bestaat, groeien naar een eigen stem en vorm die hij voor mij in de derde bundel vooral bereikt: korte in elkaar overvloeiende verzen die dezelfde stuwing krijgen als in zijn romans en daarom fascineren.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

known primarily for his nearly unclassifiable works of fiction, sebald also dabbled in the realm of poetry. across the land and the water features some ninety poems from four different collections spanning nearly forty years. as iain galbraith, the book's translator, points out in the introduction, many of sebald's poems had never previously been published, let alone translated. galbraith outlines the history and chronology of sebald's poetic writings, providing a much needed context not only for the poems themselves, but also their relationship to sebald's body of work as a whole. as importantly, he discusses the inherent difficulties of the translation process, as well as the particular hardships one inevitably must endure in attempting to render an author as distinct as sebald.

as one would expect, sebald's poems share both similar content and style with his novels. many of the included poems are but four or five lines long, while others extend to a couple of pages or more. landscape, place, travel, train passengers, and memory figure prominently into this collection. with his gentle, evocative prose and often obscure geographical references, sebald's poems, again like his fiction, are carried by both the strength of his imagery and his measured use of language. reading sebald is sometimes like viewing a distant or obscured sight, perhaps as one would see through the veil of a low-lying mist. across the land and the water serves to enrich the late german's already esteemed legacy. these poems, however enigmatic they may casually appear, are but another medium through which sebald explored the themes and ideas that have made his work so singularly expressive.

legacy

our memories are quite similar
but pickled alive
in a poison which

accompanies objects too
as a part of this emptiness

the heartening message
that pythagoras once
would listen to the stars
barely comes down to us now

then let us hope
our children are learning
to dance in the dark

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books of lyric poetry are very rarely 5 star books--it's simply too hard to write a first-rate lyric poem. But this is a collection of poems written over several decades--a selected poems--and Sebald was a rather astonishing writer. And, perhaps as much to the point, when one "compares a book against others of its type," this is clearly a superior collection. Austere, restrained, observant: not (Dickinson) generally likely to take the top of your head off, but still lovely in its way.

[Padmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conosciuto attraverso quel gioiello intitolato "Il passeggiatore solitario: In ricordo di Robert Walser", Sebald non delude. Sono brevi racconti/ricordi ("quattro schegge di prosa, una Corsica di luce e fantasmi, di natura e mito, che nessuno ha mai visto"), intervallati da meditazioni sul paesaggio corso su cui incombe la presenza di Napoleone.
Un autore da approfondire.

[Bert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more than just poetry. Way more. It is wandering. It is traveling. It is a lesson in history. In art. In language. It is almost photography. I dare say Sebald wasn't a poet. He did not write poems... he took pictures. And wrote them down.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW.

[Daniele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questo è un piccolo gioiellino di lettura.

Ricordo ad esempio di essere passato un giorno, sulla strada della scuola in una gelida mattina d'autunno, davanti al cortile della macelleria Wohlfahrt proprio nel momento in cui una decina di cerve venivano scaricate da un carretto e gettate sul selciato. Per un pezzo rimasi li impietrito, tanto ipnotica era la vista degli animali uccisi. E tutte quelle cerimonie, poi, che i cacciatori facevano con i rami di abete, così come la palma che veniva messa la domenica nella vetrina vuota e piastrellata di bianco della macelleria, già allora mi risultavano sospette. Mentre i fornai, con ogni evidenza, non avevano bisogno di simili decorazioni.
In Inghilterra ho visto in seguito ghirlande di alberelli in plastica verde, poco più alti di una spanna, che incorniciavano i tagli di carne e le interiora esposti nelle vetrine dei cosiddetti family butchers. L'irrefutabile idea, secondo cui quella decorazione sempreverde e sintetica doveva essere prodotta da qualche parte su scala industriale con l'unico scopo di tacitare i nostri sensi di colpa di fronte al sangue versato, era per me, proprio nella sua totale assurdità, la riprova di quanto forte sia il nostro desiderio di riconciliazione e quanto poco, da sempre, siamo disposti a pagare per ottenerla.

[Jody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whilst a lot of his prose is quite lovely and lyrical, I am still not a fan of poetry.

[Tod Wodicka]

I am surprised by how much I don’t like this.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having previously seen that W.G. Sebald could handle longer poems with considerable skill, I read this book hoping that he could handle shorter poems as well and I was definitely pleased with the results.  Even though these poems are (mostly) translations from German, they still work as poems.  Some of the poems are fairly long, though nowhere as near as long as the poems from After Nature.  And some of the poems are tantalizingly short, like this one, "Obscure Passage:"

Aristole did not
apprehend at all
the word he found
in Archytas
When one is dealing with thoughtful poetry like this [1], one has to recognize the depth of allusions that are being made by the poet.  Here the author is making a reference to classical views about the limitations of hearing, limitations that Aristotle did not admit of in his view of human wisdom and understanding.  At other times the poet writes what appears to be a beautiful nature ode only to leave a reference to concentration camps from Hitler's Germany in the area, turning a nature ode into a darker reflection on the relationship of history and memory and poetry.  These are great works, and as my library has more books of his, I expect to read plenty more where this came from.

This book of about 150 pages or so of poetry is divided into several sections.  The selected poems are from 1964-2001, quite a large span of his writing, and the sections the poems are placed in are labeled as follows:  Poemtrees, School Latin, Across The Land And The Water, The Year Before Last, and an appendix with two English-language poems.  Indeed, given the title of the sections, it is possible that the parts of this book are chapbooks (or at least could have been) with the poems inside them as part of some collection that was never made in English until this time.  This book has the feel of a best-of compilation in the best way, with poems relating to history, philosophy, travel, creation, memory, and other concerns that seem particularly typical from what I have read of the poet thus far.  The author shows himself to have been very well-read and also someone who thought and reflected about his place in the world and his country's place in the world, and the inherited guilt of history lies heavily on him in these pages as well, which appears to be a consistent element of Sebald's writing.

A couple of examples suffice to point out the deep resonance of the author's shorter works of lyrical poetry.  For one, the author appears to be deeply involved in conversations about other creative people--there are references to Chopin's doomed romance with a lovely young lady whose father overruled their engagement, at least a couple of references to Kafka, one to Chekov's death.  Clearly, Sebald is someone who recognizes his part of the conversation that writers engage in with other writers, and he is playful in writing in such a way that other well-read people can grasp at the depth of what is being said.  The author also mentions German history quite frequently here, and on at least a few occasions there are references to the horrors of World War II.  Sebald just cannot seem to shake the dark sense of how even the bucolic German countryside contains numerous places that have been forever (?) scarred by serving as prisons in Hitler's murderous regime.  One wonders how much time is necessary for the land to rest to become pure again, as nature is consistently malign in these poems, always full of some kind of darker angle or reference than the idea most people have when it comes to nature poems.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/tag/...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

[Keight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translator Iain Galbraith’s introduction is one of the best parts of this book, as it includes “an example … of the difficulty of translating Sebald’s poetry”:

Many of the poems in this volume—which opens with a train journey—reenact travel “across” various kinds of land and water (even if the latter is only the fluid of dreams). Indeed, several, as the writer’s archive reveals, were actually written “on the road,” penned on hotel stationery, menus, the backs of theatre programs, in cities that Sebald visited.

He goes on to talk about a poem titled “Somewhere” that involves a small town called Türkenfeld, which is an area Sebald would have passed through often, yet:

… it is well for a translator to be aware that landscapes in Sebald’s work are rarely as innocent as they seem…. In the metaphorical sense, the poem puts the traveler’s gaze itself at the center of its encounter with a cryptic landscape, exploring the difficulty of inciting a historical topography to return that gaze by divulging its secrets. Many of Sebald’s poems enact the battle of the intellect and senses with the hermetic or repellent face of history’s surface layers. The impression is one of traveling across a land in which the catastrophic events of the twentieth century have left a pattern of shallow graves under the almost pathologically hygienic and tidy upper stratum of civilization. What, then, is “behind” Türkenfeld?

Galbraith finishes by revealing the area’s connections to Dachau and how “[o]ur first unknowing reading of the poem … points to the perilous consequences of our loss of cultural memory.”

Read more on my booklog

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems I liked best in this volume aren't the obscurely allusive ones, but rather the more apparently allusive ones: the ones that are lists, that are "found poems" (as Galbraith puts it), and also the images in some of the poems about cities and journeys. I like poems drawn from life and from texts, poems collaged together from bits and pieces from newspapers and historical snippets and things seen or overheard. "Donderdag," which quotes from a Dutch newspaper report about some murders in the city of Venlo and has the speaker reading about the murders while on a plane, is one example of this kind of style; there's also a really pleasing poem that draws from events near the end of Chekhov's life, and a great list poem that features the titles of books "assembled/by chance/in the display/of a junk shop/near a railway/underpass" (101).

Other highlights of this book, for me, were "Day Return" and "New Jersey Journey", both of which feature really great city-scapes, wonderful observed or invented detail of things/places/signs seen from a train or a car.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5★

While I liked some of these poems very much, others were puzzling or incomprehensible to me -- my rating is an attempt to average out my responses. The sections I liked best were "Poemtrees" and "Across the Land and the Water"; "The Year Before Last" was the section I enjoyed least.

The two poems that appealed to me most were "Life is Beautiful" (from Poemtrees) and "New Jersey Journey" (from Across the Land and the Water).

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

While not every poem in the collection could be rated five stars on its own, the collection as a whole contained enough of the sublime to rate a five. I found Molkerbastei, a recounting of a visit to Beethoven's house in Vienna, particularly haunting.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although not Sebald's primary medium of expression these poems, some very short, capture the same haunting tone and ambiance as his prose. I am curious to see how they translate...

[Jan]

http://hetminstegeringste.blogspot.be...

[Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

It builds a poetic landscape of Germany. But I didn't find it that amazing. It is a pleasant yet gloomy reading.

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 5 out of 5]

File under: Travels, crossings, culture, visits, sights - melancholy of.
Also file under - brilliant.

[Florin Buzdugan · Rating 4 out of 5]

de lecturat și re-lecturat

[Tatyana · Rating 3 out of 5]

"For how hard it is
to understand the landscape
as you pass in a train
from here to there
and mutely it
watches you vanish."