Poetry | New Books in German, Ludwig Steinherr

‘Ludwig Steinherr’s poetry impresses with its simplicity and plainspoken qualities. There is nothing in his poems which seems at first sight complex or "difficult” and yet he manages to convey moments of transcendence and glimpses of the essence of situations. There is something almost childlike about his sense of the world: he writes with the uninhibited vision of a child, like a child he sees the tiny detail which unlocks the scene. These are poems which repay careful reading, their apparent flatness is brought to vivid life by snatches of words and brief phrases.’ – Sasha Dugdale, Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation magazine.

There are no

good photos of me:

there’s always something

wrong

the lighting the distance

friends look for

likenesses

in vain –

Only that one

you triggered by chance

while hanging the camera

round your neck

(me slantwise from behind

across the overturning

mountain path plunging

out of the picture) –

but there, in turn,

I’m too much

like myself

for anyone to

recognise me

All these sentences

sentence-systems

we use to make

the world inhabitable

for ourselves –

one fine morning

you wake up

and you recognise:

they are nothing

but charlatans –

in black in pointy hats

they throng around your

bed like the

ballet of doctors

in Molière

with their gibberish

of diagnoses

advice –

You though lie there

naked alone

and soaked in sweat

while the mute

white

of the ceiling

burns down

ever more relentlessly

This poem

is superfluous –

Superfluous like

most poems are

and like most things

in general –

If it were at least

a bud

which no one perceived

in the cherry-tree

spilling over with blossoms –

A snowflake

which melted away unremarked

on someone’s sleeve –

But it’s just envy

of snowflake bud

of whatever else

that’s so perfectly

superfluous

Old holiday film:

you’re just this moment

leaving the water –

I wind forward

wind back

again and again

The drops

drip down

fly up

into your laughing face –

insatiable moment

ten years

ago now

the way you look at me

don’t see me

Because the earth’s flat

a fiery cylinder

a globe

Because there’s only yes and no

Because statistics claim it

Because Kant’s been refuted

Because the medical journal advises

Because the gods call for blood sacrifices

Because there’s no such person as God

Because the racial doctrine proves

Because it can’t go on this way

Because it’s apparent to everybody

Because we have no other resort

The blind man – till something better turns up –

goes tagging after the blind man

tagging after the

blind man

No one apart from you

is awake –

only those who

never sleep:

God, that is, and

the Mafia

Rum company

you think

go to the window

and wait

But no light

goes on

the Mafia’s kept mum

for centuries

and God

for whole aeons

Steinherr’s poetry has been jointly published by New Books in German and Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. More of Ludwig Steinherr’s poems, translated by Richard Dove, can be found in the latest issue of MPT.

Ludwig Steinherr Photo: private

was born in Munich in 1962. He studied philosophy and earned a PhD for his thesis on Hegel and Quine. He has received various awards, including the prestigious Leonce-und-Lena-Förderpreis, and the Hermann-Hesse-Förderpreis. He has been invited to various internationally acclaimed literary festivals, such as the Journées Littéraires de Mondorf, German- Arabian Poetry Salon in Damascus, as well as the European Literature Night in London, StAnza – Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, and the Birmingham Literature Festival. Recent publications include Das Mädchen Der Maler Ich. Collected Poems (‘The Girl The Painter I’, 2012), Ganz Ohr (All Ears, Lyrikedition 2000, 2012) and Flüstergalerie (‘Whisper Gallery’, 2013). Along with All Ears, Before the Invention of Paradise (Arc Publications, 2010) is also available in English translation.

Richard Dove Photo: private

was born in Bath in 1954, read Modern Languages at Oxford and taught German and English language and literature at the Universities of Exeter, Regensburg and Wales before moving to Munich in 1987, where he has since worked as a writer and lecturer. His early poems were recently collected in the bilingual volume Aus einem früheren Leben (‘From a Previous Life’, Lyrikedition, 2000, 2003), translated inter alia by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Reiner Kunze. Since moving to the Federal Republic, he has written his poems largely in German while translating into English. Dove has published versions of poems by Michael Krüger, Ernst Meister and Friederike Mayröcker. His editions include a bilingual collection by Joachim Sartorius, translated by, among others, Robert Gray, Michael Hamburger, Christopher Middleton, Nathaniel Tarn and Rosmarie Waldrop.