Michael Eskin Poetic Affairs

Annotation

Poetic Affairs deals with the complex and fascinating interface between literature and life through the prism of the lives and works of three outstanding poets: the German-Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan (1920-1970); the Leningrad native, U.S. poet laureate, and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996); and Germany's premier contemporary poet, Durs Grunbein (born 1962). Focusing on their poetic dialogues with such interlocutors as Shakespeare, Seneca, and Byron, respectively-veritable love affairs unfolding in and through poetry-Eskin offers unprecedented readings of Celan's, Brodsky's, and Grunbein's lives and works and discloses the ways in which poetry articulates and remains faithful to the manifold "truths"-historical, political, poetic, erotic-determining human existence.