Messing About in Boats

Michael Hofmann is Professor of English at the University of Florida. His poems, reviews, and essays have been published in the Guardian, London Review of Books, Modern Painters, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, New York Times, Poetry, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of critical writing, Behind the Lines (2001) and Where Have You Been? (2014) and six books of poems, most recently, One Lark, One Horse (2018). He has edited selections of John Berryman, W.S. Graham, Robert Lowell, and Malcolm Lowry. He has translated some 80 books from German, poetry (Gottfried Benn, Günter Eich, Durs Grünbein), plays (Bertolt Brecht and Patrick Süskind), and fiction (all of Peter Stamm, most of Joseph Roth and Wolfgang Koeppen, large parts of Hans Fallada, Gert Hofmann, Franz Kafka, and Wim Wenders, and single books by many more, including Thomas Bernhard, Elias Canetti, Ernst Jünger, Irmgard Keun, Herta Müller, and Jakob Wassermann).

The most original aspect of Michael Hofmann's own contribution to poetry involve his skillful manipulation of multilingual expertise, which contributes to his mobile and multifaceted style. [...] it is extremely illuminating.

• Introduction 1: Rainer Maria Rilke: 'Emigranten-Schiff, Neapel' 2: Arthur Rimbaud: 'Le Bateau Ivre', 'The Drunken Ship' 3: Eugenio Montale: 'Barche sulla Marna', 'Boats on the Marne' 4: Karen Solie: 'The World' Conclusion Bibliography and Notes