Impromptus by Gottfried Benn and translated by Michael Hofmann

This is poetry from Germany.

Impromptus by Gottfried Benn translated by Michael Hofmann is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This is a Book originally written in German. This was published in 2013.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780374175375E12.

Impromptus, by Gottfried Benn and translated by Michael Hofmann from German, brings German poetry into English through Gottfried Benn’s impromptu modernism, medical coldness, and the unnerving elegance of decay. 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 clinic, decay, form, and the beauty problem that happens when intelligence refuses comfort, 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. Impromptus belongs in the translated poetry library because it offers a concentrated entrance into one of German modernism’s most troubling lyric minds.

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.