The Art of Topiary: Poems [Multiple Languages]

By Jan Wagner

A dual-language collection of vivid, tightly knit poems from one of the most important contemporary poets writing in German.

The Art of Topiary is the gorgeous product of a long collaboration between Jan Wagner and American poet David Keplinger. With the care of master gardeners tending their plants, Wagner and Keplinger have shaped Wagner's originals--acclaimed internationally, now in English for the first time--into precise, delightful, and highly modern translations.

Along the way, the collection unfolds dialogues between discipline and freedom, sound and sense, faithfulness and improvisation. In these poems, formal structures are a corset loosened by each line of verse, a garden always pleasurably at risk of being overrun. Yet for all Wagner's wit and sharp poetic detail, The Art of Topiary is written with an intimate earnest: a swarm of gnats take on an urgent mystery as they hum in code around the speaker's ears, a bird atop a rhino's leathery back becomes a fragile porcelain cup, and the antlers of an elk reach for the air like a champion for a trophy.

Compact, lightfooted, and curious, The Art of Topiary is the exciting American debut of a stunning and joyful voice in global literature.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: Multiple Languages
• ISBN: 1571314962
• ISBN13: 9781571314963
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"