3.5★

While I liked some of these poems very much, others were puzzling or incomprehensible to me -- my rating is an attempt to average out my responses. The sections I liked best were "Poemtrees" and "Across the Land and the Water"; "The Year Before Last" was the section I enjoyed least.

The two poems that appealed to me most were "Life is Beautiful" (from Poemtrees) and "New Jersey Journey" (from Across the Land and the Water). ( )

Rather than greater virtue
the happy ending proposes
more trivial vices


Sebald gave the world sparse allusions, which appear to sprout from our blunted sense of history into something solitary yet profound. These poems are restless, suggesting a rugged terrain, a mackintosh and perhaps a paperback in the back pocket. Donne or Eckermann.


Irony it is said
Is a form of humility

There's a deprecation at play when one is immersed in erudition. That choice demands a steep cost. Prudent to bring proper shoes. The impulses which harangue are only to be exacerbated. ( )

While I liked some of these poems very much, others were puzzling or incomprehensible to me -- my rating is an attempt to average out my responses. The sections I liked best were "Poemtrees" and "Across the Land and the Water"; "The Year Before Last" was the section I enjoyed least.

The two poems that appealed to me most were "Life is Beautiful" (from Poemtrees) and "New Jersey Journey" (from Across the Land and the Water). ( )

Nothing much to say about this book other than Sebald's own wish to remembered for his prose. These bits were mostly just pen put to paper, a recording of words more reportage than anything resembling fine poetry. ( )

Unlike a lot of people whose introduction to the writing of W.G. Sebald was through books such as Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz, or Vertigo, mine was through the Micropoems in Unrecounted, a slim volume of thirty three poems, with accompanying lithographs by Jan Peter Tripp. So when I saw this Selected poems at NetGalley my curiosity was piqued and I requested it wondering whether without the pictures the poetry featured would be as hermetic or whether the act of trying to match the image with the poem was the lock that forbade admittance.

Published a decade after his death, this anthology pulls together poetry from various periods of his life. Stretching over 37 years it contains poems from two early collections Poemtrees and School Latin, these are followed by his later writing Across the Land and the Water and The Year Before Last ending with the appendix containing two poems Sebald wrote in English, making this a wonderful addition to any Sebald completist’s library.

If, on the rare occasion, I get to interview someone who writes novels & poetry, one of my default questions is how they perceive themselves, a poet who turned to fiction, or as a novelist first. This question seems to me relevant when dealing with the work of this writer & better still seems to have been answered by Iain Galbraith (translator notes), who writes - Sebald once stated that “My medium is prose”, a statement that is easily misconstrued, if it wasn’t for the subtle distinction added by this writer “Not the Novel”, in fact Galbraith goes on to say that “ far from disavowing his fondness for the poetic form, it is through it that we can begin to sense the poetic consistency that permeates his literary prose and also of his writing as a whole.” This makes sense as many of the themes ( borders, journeys, archives, landscapes, reading, time, memory, myth, legend etc.), that would be recognised in his later acclaimed work feature in those early poems.

Epitaph.

On duty

on a stretch in the alpine foothills

the railway clerk considers the essence

of the tear-off calendar.



with bowed back

Rosary Hour

waits outside

for admittance to the house

The clerk knows:

he must take home

this interval

without delay.

(from Poemtrees)

That’s not to say, that this collection doesn’t stand up on its own, anyone without knowledge of this writers oeuvre, will still find this a fascinating read, will like myself try to prise understanding from the words written, unlike the epic quality of his later prose work, a lot of the poems are sparse and compressed, they allude to places and by association events, things, people, although the later ones seem to loosen up, unwind slightly, it’s merely by degrees. As I said in “Unrecounted” you're making connections, trying to find routes into its dialogue, but this is ideolectic, the patterns here are those of an individual, there are probably reference points, but like all reference points, they act as signposts to something - not the thing itself.

http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/across-land-and-waterwg-sebald.html ( )