Berlin Fresco by Norbert Hummelt and translated by Catherine Hales

This is poetry from Germany.

Berlin Fresco by Norbert Hummelt translated by Catherine Hales is published by Shearsman Books. This is a Book originally written in German. This was published in 2010.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781848610965E12.

Berlin Fresco, by Norbert Hummelt and translated by Catherine Hales from German, brings German poetry into English through Berlin surfaces, mural memory, and Norbert Hummelt’s sense of the city as something painted over but not erased. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem begins making its own weather. I would read it for Berlin, fresco, wall, and the layered look of urban history showing through the present, not as a fixed lesson about a nation, period, or school. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Berlin Fresco belongs in the translated poetry library because it adds a city-facing German lyric of place, memory, and afterimage.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.