Steffen Horstmann – författare

Praise for JalsagharMy hands memorize your hourglass waist. /Slow winds pass through distant sands, sifting grains. Imagine that beauty rethought in stanza after stanza. The ghazal is the Satie of poetry, sustained by the whirling dervish, its couplets braiding into the brain. Steffen Horstmanns Jalsaghar is a stunning homage to the late Agha Shahid Ali (Terese Svoboda, author of Professor Harrimans Steam Air-Ship).A rapproachment with a formal tradition demands incisive cultural evaluation; an assay of a formal tradition not ones own demands that one become a naturalized citizen of a nation of poetry. The sure-footedness with which Steffen Horstmann navigates the ghazal forma kind of poem often misunderstood in Anglophone practiceis a testimony to long and devoted study as well as to Horstmanns skill as a practitioner, his keen ear, and his passion for the possibilities of the kind of dtente poetry offers: a genuine cross-pollination of the music, the landscapes, the souls of distant and yet always kindred lives (T. R. Hummer, author of Skandalon). Steffen Horstmanns book of contemporary ghazals shows us the ways in which formin this case precise, musical, devotional in its originscan act as a vehicle for meditation. The rhymes and repetitions of the ghazal are part prayer, part spell, and as such they bind together in language the world of material things and the world of spirit, which is also a world of longing. Agha Shahid Ali brought the tradition of the ghazal into the center of our contemporary and American poetic repertoire; Steffen Horstmann has carried it into our young century, made it new (Mark Wunderlich, author of The Earth Avails).

Praise for Ujjain Steffen Horstmanns book Ujjain is a remarkable collection of Ghazals in Eng-lish. Steffen uses an ancient form of poetry to express the sensibility of a modern day poet, and by doing so, he crosses the boundaries of languages, cultures, and traditions. Agha Shahid Ali couldnt have been more proud of his Shagird Steffen Horstmann, who has kept the torch burning, that he passed on to him after writing Call Me Ishmael Tonight. Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, author of Bare Soul The meditative and sublime states in Steffen Horstmanns radiant collection Ujjain render sonorous arias of cautionary tales for our time-those places of beauty, loss and pain collide into a longing for a vanished world. In these astute ghazals, myth and life and after-life send this poet on a path to claim where the self fits in: Of a world that vanished before I existed. Horstmanns luminous voice guides us to where beauty resides, Through the dark like a train there, These evocations torque into epiphanies rich with awe to light our way-And we are so much richer for this journey. Cynthia Atkins, author of In the Event of Full Disclosure Steffen Horstmann is a worthy student of Agha Shahid Ali in this collection of ghazals which embrace the East and West, as much at ease on Arjunas chariot as among the sacred tombs of Ithaka, or the very real foothills of Qhar. The natural world is incandescent: Bass glisten in rock pools like slick knives / With silver light glinting in their fast shadows, but it is The Diva of Jalsaghar that elegantly soars on melody as Air is scriptured by the syllabic flight / Of the voice of Begum Akhtar. A thoughtful and lyrical collection of ghazals written in English. Dipika Mukherjee, author of Shambala Junction