Thirty poems by Robert Walser and translated by Christopher Middleton

This is poetry from Switzerland.

Thirty poems by Robert Walser translated by Christopher Middleton is published by New Directions Pub.. This is a Book originally written in German. This was published in 2012.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780811220019E12.

Thirty poems, by Robert Walser and translated by Christopher Middleton from German, brings Swiss German-language poetry into English through Robert Walser’s thirty small poems, walking intelligence, and the modest grandeur of noticing without possession. 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 walking, smallness, snow, and the strange dignity of a minor-looking sentence, 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. Thirty poems belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives the library a Swiss classic of humility, motion, and delicate strangeness.

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.