With her help, Göritz asks, ‘Isn’t it time we went missing?’” -Rae Armantrout, author of “Finalists” The book is rendered into sharp, pithy, idiomatic English by the poet and translator Mary Jo Bang, who has recently translated Dante. This may be the ‘Giant Redeye Cicada’ eye view of modern human existence-what one can see when one gives up thinking one understands. It’s a close-up, high speed tour of life, passing through various world cities-none of them home, yet each haunted by the gargoyle-like figures of Mother and Father. “Matthias Göritz’s ‘Colonies of Paradise’ is unlike any book of American poetry I can recall reading. Bravo.” -Ilya Kaminsky, author of “Deaf Republic: Poems” Matthias Göritz is an original, talented contemporary German poet, and translator Mary Jo Bang is one of the most interesting poets currently at work in the English language. This is the kind of art that is never willing to rest, always in motion. “There are no neat stories and anecdotes here: the flashes of perception, of understanding, are given to us via stark metaphors, images, unpredictable syntax, musical structures that are by turns surprising and illuminating. She teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poetry-including “Elegy: Poems,” which received the National Book Critics Circle Award-and the translator of Dante’s “Inferno,” illustrated by Henrik Drescher, and “Purgatorio.” She has received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship. He teaches at Washington University in St. He has received the Hamburg Literature Prize, the Mara Cassens Prize, the Robert Gernhardt Prize, and the William Gass Award. He has written four poetry collections, “Loops,” “Pools,” “Tools” and “Spools” three novels, including “Der kurze Traum des Jakob Voss (The Brief Dream of Jakob Voss)” and “Parker” and three novellas. Matthias Göritz is a poet, translator, and novelist. Göritz’s sly humor, keen insight, and artistry are brought to the fore in Bang’s careful and innovative translation, allowing an English-language audience to enter fully the intricate interiority of Göritz’s work. Unsettling our expectations about adulthood, the book permeates the quotidian with a disquieting strangeness that leads us deeper into our own lives and histories. The poems in this book, which originally appeared in German under the title “Loops,” take the reader on a tour of Paris, Chicago, Hamburg and Moscow as they explore childhood, travel and the human experience. In “Colonies of Paradise,” acclaimed poet and translator Mary Jo Bang introduces the poems of novelist, poet and translator Matthias Göritz, one of the most exciting German writers publishing today. Very few books of poetry by contemporary German writers are available to English-speaking readers. The first book of poetry by Matthias Göritz to be available in English, in a translation by a renowned writer.
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