Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry: A Bilingual Edition

<p><b>2015 National Translation Award Winner in Poetry</b></p><p>Paul Celan, one of the greatest German-language poets of the twentieth century, created an oeuvre that stands as testimony to the horrors of his times and as an attempt to chart a topography for a new, uncontaminated language and world. <i>Breathturn into Timestead: </i><i>The</i> <i>Collected Later Poetry </i>gathers the five final volumes of his life's work in a bilingual edition, translated and with commentary by the award-winning poet and translator Pierre Joris.</p><br><p> This collection displays a mature writer at the height of his talents, following what Celan himself called the &quot;turn&quot; (<i>Wende) </i> of his work away from the lush, surreal metaphors of his earlier verse. Given &quot;the sinister events in its memory,&quot; Celan believed that the language of poetry had to become &quot;more sober, more factual . . . 'grayer.'&quot; Abandoning the more sumptuous music of the first books, he pared down his compositions to increase the accuracy of the language that now &quot;does not transfigure or render 'poetical'; it names, it posits, it tries to measure the area of the given and the possible.&quot; In his need for an inhabitable post-Holocaust world, Celan saw that &quot;reality is not simply there; it must be searched for and won.&quot; </p><br><p> <i>Breathturn into Timestead</i> reveals a poet undergoing a profound artistic reinvention. The work is that of a witness and a visionary.</p>