German Poetry Guide: Learn to Appreciate Free Verse & Classic Poems | Perfect for Students, Book Clubs & Literature Lovers
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SKU:95202261
Product Description
Dr Gray aims to encourage in students beginning to read and write about German poetry the skills which will help them to read and write with more insight. After outlining this aim in its introduction, this 1976 book takes the form of a selection of German poems from Luther to Brecht, carefully grouped for purposes of comparison, and with graded questions. Most of the poems are from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but there are also translations from and into German for comparison with the originals, groups of poems on common themes, and different versions of the same poem. It is possible to trace in outline some of the main historical trends of German poetry, and to acquire basic technical knowledge within the book, but its main aim is to guide the reader towards a closer feeling for the words on the page.
Customer Reviews
This is not light reading but for anyone with an advanced knowledge of German (the examples are not translated into English) who is interested in learning how to read a German poem with a critical eye, it can open a new world of understanding. The preface sets the direction and the tone of the book taking the reader past poetic form into the quality of poetic expression in the German language. Leave behind counting syllables and stress and find out what makes a poem great.The book starts with a comparison of German translations of well-known English poetry asking which German translation strikes the reader as capturing the essence of the English original? Subsequent chapters cover different themes found in German poetry (evening, the moon and stars, the city, men and women in love, and religious poems) and classic and romantic trends. Dozens of poems are presented with an excellent commentary to help direct the reader to find the 'hidden meaning' of the poem on his own. A rather large portion of the book of this thin volume is then given up to poems for personal study and comment. Lastly, a very short (too short?) chapter looks at the meter, form, and rhythm of German poetry.Written as a textbook, this is not a book for a quick read. If, however, the reader will take time to work through the book slowly digesting the thought behind the poetry, he may come out at the other end of the book with a new appreciation for German poetry.
