Thirty Poems
Thirty Poems
By Robert Walser
Translated by Christopher Middleton
"The poems also give us Walser’s manner in concentrated miniature, and it could be that rhyme—joining the disparate, cultivating the arbitrary - is at the heart of what he is doing. They are odd, whimsical, insouciant things, exhilarating in their ability to be what they are."—The Times Literary Supplement
"The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser’s work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be?"—Rivka Galchen, Harper’s Magazine
In a small, exquisite clothbound format resembling the early Swiss and German editions of Walser’s work, Thirty Poems collects famed translator Christopher Middleton’s favorite poems from the more than five hundred Walser wrote. The illustrations range from an early poem in perfect copperplate handwriting, to one from a 1927 Czech-German newspaper, to a microscript.
Hardcover
64 pages
New Directions, 2012
5.3 x 0.4 x 7.3 inches
ISBN 9780811220019
Poetry