Rubble Flora by Volker Braun
Rubble Flora is a selection of poems from the distinguished, half-century-long career of German poet Volker Braun. Born in the former East Germany, Braun is a humane, witty, brave, and disappointed poet. In the East, his poetry upheld the voice of the individual imagination and identified with a utopian possibility that never became reality. He might be said to have found a truly singular voice amid the colossal upheavals of 1989-exploring the triumph of capitalism and the languages of advertising, terror, politics, and war. At the same time, Braun is a sensual poet in tune with the natural landscape. He has his own touchstones in world literature, and many of his poems set quotations from Rimbaud, Shakespeare, and Brecht into his own context, where they work as ironic illuminations of a present plight. The literary principle of his work lies in the friction of these different voices, whether cast into free form, collage, or classical verse. Cumulatively, Rubble Flora offers a searing vision of these transformative decades.-
War Diary
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Intelligence Is the Art of Remaining Faithful under Shifting Circumstances
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The Flying Mountain
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Holderlin
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Sebastian Dreaming
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Air Raid
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Monsters Like Us
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Gone But Not Forgotten
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Atlas of an Anxious Man
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The Village Indian
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The Silences of Hammerstein
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Kazimira
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Myself, Four Times
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Without Model
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The Idiots
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fleurs
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‘We Didn’t Do Very Well’
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At the Burning Abyss
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In Search of Lost Time
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Blumenberg
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A History of Clouds
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'I'
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A Slap in the Face
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Night Music
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Old Masters
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Rummelplatz
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Bad Sheep
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Arson
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Lifespan Narratives
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Of Seven Fir Trees and the Snow
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The Long March of Basic Trust
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My Mother's Silver Fox
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In the Forest of Metropoles
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Circus Commentary
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Orpheus in the Underworld
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A Skeleton Plays Violin
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The Rest Is Slander
"A book-length collection of Braun's poetry is long, long overdue. . . Rubble Flora is a most welcome volume and certainly essential for anyone interested in modern German poetry, as well as (thoughtfully) politically engaged poetry."-- "Complete Review"
"An excellent introduction to Braun's work. . . . As the reader progresses through Rubble Flora, he or she is offered what amounts to a poetic history of the forms of life through which Braun has lived: the Third Reich (into which he was born); the German Democratic Republic (in which he grew up and worked, a critical socialist); German unification and the tensions of capitalism (which he has witnessed as a critical citizen of the new Germany). It is very good to see a poem dedicated to its translator, incidentally, which is one of the many ways in which this book makes connections."-- "Poetry Salzburg Review"
"An excellent introduction to Braun's work. . . . As the reader progresses through Rubble Flora, he or she is offered what amounts to a poetic history of the forms of life through which Braun has lived: the Third Reich (into which he was born); the German Democratic Republic (in which he grew up and worked, a critical socialist); German unification and the tensions of capitalism (which he has witnessed as a critical citizen of the new Germany). It is very good to see a poem dedicated to its translator, incidentally, which is one of the many ways in which this book makes connections."-- "Poetry Salzburg Review"
Volker Braun is the author of numerous plays, works of fiction, volumes of poetry, and essays. David Constantine is a writer and translator. Karen Leeder is professor of modern German literature at the University of Oxford and a fellow in German at New College, Oxford.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780857422187 |
| ISBN 10 | 0857422189 |
| Title | Rubble Flora |
| Author | Volker Braun |
| Series | The German List |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Seagull Books London Ltd |
| Year published | 2014-09-30 |
| Number of pages | 144 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |