Unexpected Development

Klaus Merz was born in 1945 in Aarau and lives in Unterkulm, Switzerland. He has won many literary awards including the Hermann Hesse Prize for Literature, the Swiss Schiller Foundation Poetry Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize in 2012 and the Rainer-Malkowski-Preis in 2016. He has published over 35 works of poetry and fiction. His latest novel is The Argentinian (Der Argentine, Haymon, 2009) and his recent collections of verse are Out of the Dust (Aus dem Staub, Haymon, 2010), Unexpected Development (Unerwarteter Verlauf, Haymon, 2013) and Helios’ Haulage (Helios Transport, Haymon 2016).  Innsbruck's Haymon Verlag has published his collected works in seven volumes (2352 pages), featuring all his work in poetry and prose (collected and uncollected) from 1963 through 2014.  Merzluft (Breathing Merz), a feature-length documentary by Heinz Bütler about Klaus Merz and his work was released in 2015.Born in Hong Kong, Marc Vincenz is British-Swiss and is the author of ten books of poetry; his latest are Becoming the Sound of Bees (Ampersand Books, 2015), Sibylline (Ampersand Books, 2016) and The Syndicate of Water & Light (Station Hill, 2018). His novella, Three Taos of T'ao, or How to Catch a White Elephant is to be released by Spuyten Duyvil in 2017. He is the translator of many German- French- and Romanian-language poets. His translation work has received fellowships and grants from the Swiss Arts Council and the Literary Colloquium Berlin.  His own recent publications, include The Nation, Ploughshares, The Common, Solstice, Raritan, Notre Dame Review and World Literature Today.  He is International Editor of Plume, publisher of MadHat Press and Plume Editions, and lives and writes in Western Massachusetts.

“Merz's is a voice unfamiliar to English-language readers, but this collection should remedy that. His language is clipped and terse, dry, precise, sardonic even. A narrative pokes through and light comes in short bursts as Merz takes careful notes, thinking and feeling himself into his subject, shaping it as if from fragments. It all adds up to a strange exhilaration, curiously impersonal yet packed with personality. These poems, expertly Englished by master translator-poet Marc Vincenz, delight, engage and tease the mind.”—Brian Swann"“Reading Klaus Merz’ spare and illuminating poems is like entering Plato’s cave and witnessing the light behind the shadows. As he writes in his poem, “Exchange Rate” “From the bright light/behind the apparition/ the poem recounts.” What is recounted however, is often as disquieting as it is enlightening. His unblinking honesty and lyrical genius offer a kind of dark salvation, or a salvation in the sense Camus might have meant when he wrote: “If one could say just once: ‘this is clear,’ all would be saved.”  Merz is like a diamond cutter—he writes of the inevitable and the ineffable with incisive, shimmering clarity.”—Nin Andrews

• IntroductionI Aus der Forschung Research ShowsIm rückwärtigen RaumIn the Backward ChamberRegelwerkRegulationsPilotprojektPilot ProjectAus der ForschungResearch ShowsKerngeschäftCore BusinessKurswechselCurrency ExchangeWechselkursExchange RateVariaMiscellanyDann geriet er … Then he fell …Passiver Widerstand Passive ResistanceBeglaubigungAttestationII Gang um den FelsenJaunt Around the Cliff FaceDurchs Tal der hundert TälerThrough the Valley of a Hundred ValleysZum RosengartenInto the Rose GardenErbgangHereditary StrollPassauPassauAm MondseeAt MondseeIm Zug der ZeitIn the Course of TimeHotel TirolHotel TirolBorderlineBorderlineUniversitätUniversityNichts geht ...Nothing transcendsAuf einen bemalten OfenOn the Painted StoveNach HomerAfter HomerAriadnes SchwesterAdrianes’ SisterHoher WellengangHigh SwellGang um den FelsenJaunt Around the Cliff FaceStill lebenStill LifeLetzter Wunsch Last WishIII Ein ZwischenspielAn InterludeHeißer FriedeHeated SatisfactionIV Kostbarer AugenblickA Precious MomentSchauspielDramaIm Wald üben Tambouren … In the woods, tambourines …Was zu beweisen warWhat Needed to Be ProvenKostbarer AugenblickA Precious MomentLeichtes SpielDelicate GameAuf nach GrinzingOff to Grinzing (Austria)BonsaiBonsaiAnfang NovemberNovember BeginsLiebesgedichtLove PoemBibliothekLibraryNächtliche ErnteNocturnal HarvestMeisterkursMaster ClassSpaziergangStroll V Geglückte GenesungSuccessful ConvalescenceKreisverkehrRotary TrafficGarderobeWardrobeTreue Freunde, sage ich … Loyal friends, I sayAhoi!Yoo-hoo!Neue HeimatNew HomelandEwiges LichtEternal LightGeglückte GenesungSuccessful ConvalescenceEr blieb den Tagen … Deliberately, he stayed the course …Wir legten eine irdene Taube … We placed an earthenware dove …