Suhrkamp Insel

Friederike Mayröcker

études

Études is what Friederike Mayröcker calls her prose poetry and lyrical prose pieces, studies then, or »shreddings«, as she says, splintering, brittle and highly concentrated; the language heightened to the most essential of it only, that is the dissolution of boundaries between time and space, the transposition of the lived moment into an eternal here and now. All of them are variations on the evanescence of everything terrestrial – a motive that has long since become the dominant one in the poeta magica’s later works which are constantly radicalising themselves.

Friederike Mayröcker

fleurs

fleurs – the flowers, the flower petals, they give this book its title, make us think of spring, of mild air and gently flowing ribbons. But if you let yourself be lured onto that track, you are not going to end up on a lovely field of flowers, but on stony and steep terrain: »agnus dei the footlingsz bound together, 1 bushel of white flowers in the mouth«. That’s the Mayröcker-sound that has been ringing out her whole poetic life – unsentimental, crystal clear, committed to nothing but a poetry that only ever wants the one thing: images of compelling power and vividness and a language so free, bold and unspent as if it had been newly invented for this book.

Friederike Mayröcker

ich sitze nur GRAUSAM da

Friederike Mayröcker

Night Train

More than an account of a train trip from Paris to Vienna, Night Train depicts a journey through life, as conceived by the female narrator.

Friederike Mayröcker

Scardanelli

Friederike Mayröcker

And I Shook my Beloved

Spiegel Online: »Have you ever considered writing, rather straightforwardly and at length, about your relationship with Ernst Jandl?« Mayröcker: »I’ve thought about it, but I need time.« Interview from October 26, 2001

Dana Ranga

Waterbook

Dana Ranga’s poems are stations on a journey through the depths of the ocean and at the same time scenes from a sub-aquatic film. Against this strange underwater backdrop, fish and man encounter each other in a series of rapidly changing scenes, and the play of transformations begins: the air breathers grow gills and the deep-sea dwellers develop all too human passions.

Lutz Seiler

in field latin

in field latin or in other words: to exist in a field of language, and at the same time explore a landscape’s legends, how they come to one’s ears, in walks, in whispers, in silence. Lutz Seiler’s new poems, written between 2004 and 2010, set off on expeditions into the borderlands surrounding Berlin, into the middle of the »syntax of this region«, marked by time’s relentless change.

Clemens J. Setz

The Ostrich Trumpet

Why did young women in the nineteenth century like to stick sharp needles in their mouths in the dark? What is it that prevents someone from being a great lover? And what do childless parrots do?

Hans-Ulrich Treichel

Der einzi­ge Gast