Like his subject matter Meister’s writing is ominous, intangible and inescapable.–Publishers Weekly
The translators of Wallless Space were brave to take on Meister’s dense and unusual poetry, and so far their work has been excellent. . . . Foust and Frederick have preserved the phonetic elements of Meister’s verse–assonance, alliteration, rhyme, anaphora–without sacrificing the poet’s distilled diction and powerfully short dimeter and trimeter lines.–Christopher Shannon, Words Without Borders
One of the last books by post-war German poet and Georg Büchner Prize winner Ernst Meister–and the third to be translated into English by poet Graham Foust and scholar Samuel Frederick–Of Entirety Say the Sentence is his most expansive book. With rich allusions to Hölderlin and Celan, these poems are staggering in their scope of mortality, time, and infinity.
Mankind
has his song to sing,
and even though I am
shaken by the world’s silence,
I don’t want to fling anything
over the crown of his head.
Ernst Meister (1911-1979) was born in Hagen, Germany. He was posthumously awarded the most prestigious award for German literature, the Georg Büchner Prize.
Graham Foust is the author of several collections of poetry, including To Anacreon in Heaven and Other Poems (Flood Editions, April 2013). He teaches at the University of Denver.
Samuel Frederick is the author of Narratives Unsettled: Digression in Robert Walser, Thomas Bernhard, and Adalbert Stifter (Northwestern University Press, 2012). He is an assistant professor of German at the Pennsylvania State University.
