Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964-2001

by Iain Galbraith (Translator), W. G. Sebald (Author)

New
Paperback
2012
$16.14

A stunningly beautiful selection of poetry by W. G. Sebald. 'The greatest writer of our time' Peter Carey Across the Land and the Water brings together poems from throughout W. G. Sebald's life as well as additional works found after his death. Arranged chronologically, from his student days in the 1960s to the longer narratives he worked on in the 1980s, these poems are suffused by the themes which dominated Sebald's books. Here you will find subtle vignettes on nature and history, death and memory, journeys and landscapes, each short piece filled with insight, sensitivity and brilliance. 'An important book . . . full of things that are beautiful and fascinating' Andrew Motion, Guardian 'When you read Sebald you are transported to another realm. Reading him is a truly sublime experience' Literary Review 'Gracefully unsettling. The poems invest every landscape with an archaeologist's sense of the pain, toil and loss secreted in each layer of soil' Independent 'One of the most important writers of our time' A. S. Byatt 'Delightful' Economist 'Show a humane and complex intelligence and deserve a place next to Sebald's prose output' New Statesman W. G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, A Place in the Country.

Synopsis

A stunningly beautiful selection of poetry by W. G. Sebald. 'The greatest writer of our time' Peter Carey Across the Land and the Water brings together poems from throughout W. G. Sebald's life as well as additional works found after his death. Arranged chronologically, from his student days in the 1960s to the longer narratives he worked on in the 1980s, these poems are suffused by the themes which dominated Sebald's books. Here you will find subtle vignettes on nature and history, death and memory, journeys and landscapes, each short piece filled with insight, sensitivity and brilliance. 'An important book . . . full of things that are beautiful and fascinating' Andrew Motion, Guardian 'When you read Sebald you are transported to another realm. Reading him is a truly sublime experience' Literary Review 'Gracefully unsettling. The poems invest every landscape with an archaeologist's sense of the pain, toil and loss secreted in each layer of soil' Independent 'One of the most important writers of our time' A. S. Byatt 'Delightful' Economist 'Show a humane and complex intelligence and deserve a place next to Sebald's prose output' New Statesman W. G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, A Place in the Country.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 04 Oct 2012
ISBN 10: 0141044861
ISBN 13: 9780141044866

Media Reviews

Praise for W. G. Sebald How fortunate we are to have this writer's startling imagination freshly on display once again, and now in poetry. ACROSS THE LAND AND THE WATER is a rich collection full of little mysteries, unnerving insights, and odd reflections, all expressed in language honed to a perfect simplicity. 'The Three Wise Men/Are walking the earth, ' his lines go, and at least one of them is W.G. Sebald. -- Billy Collins, former United States Poet Laureate A significant addition to Sebald's main achievement - full of things that are beautiful and fascinating in themselves, and which cast a revealing light on the evolution and content of his prose . . . . an important book. -- The Guardian UK Now with the publication of Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1962-2001, thanks to the translation and scholarship of Iain Galbraith, Sebald readers can hear the master's voice again and see in distilled form the Sebald landscape, as if for the first time...Sebald reminds me of the humanist tradition of Gunter Grass or Heinrich Boll, company he unquestionably belongs to as poet, essayist and prose writer, one of the great artists of our time. -- The Irish Times This selection of W G (Max) Sebald's poems will be treasure trove to his admirers. Brilliantly translated by Iain Galbraith . . . it includes works from the whole length of his creative life, cut short far too early in December 2001... In fact, read them all, and more than once. I would suggest reading the poems straight through first, then again side by side with Galbraith's notes - seldom is a set of notes to a text so entertaining in itself - and then for a third time. Three readings, I can assure anyone, will be no hardship. -- Literary Review UK As in his prose, the poems invest every landscape with an archaeologist's sense of the pain, toil and loss secreted in each layer of soil. Always an inveterate 'Border Crosser' - between lands, ages, m

Author Bio

W.G. Sebald is one of very few German writers of the last few decades to have attracted both a broad readership in the UK and an international following of journalists and scholars alike. He has proved a huge inspiration not just to younger writers but also to artists and photographers fascinated by the use of imagery and images in his work. His books include Austerlitz, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and After Nature. Iain Galbraith is a widely published translator of German into English. He won the John Dryden Prize for Literary Translation in 2004.