In these 99 meditations, poet and novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger celebrates the tenacity of the normal and routine in everyday life, where the survival of the objects we use without thinking--a pair of scissors, perhaps--is both a small, human victory and a quiet reminder of our own ephemeral nature.
He sets his quotidian reflections against a broad historical and political backdrop: the cold war and its accompanying atomic threat; the German student revolt; would-be socialism in Cuba, China, and Africa; and World War II as experienced by the youthful poet.
Enzensberger's poems are conversational, skeptical, and serene; they culminate in the extended set of observations that gives the collection its title.
Clouds, alien and yet symbols of human life, are for Enzensberger at once a central metaphor of the Western poetic tradition and the most fleeting of all masterpieces.
Cloud archaeology, writes Enzensberger, is a science for angels.
Praise for the German edition After reading this wonderful volume of poetry one would like to call Enzensberger simply the lyric voice of transience.
-- Sueddeutsche Zeitung With this book Enzensberger reveals himself both as a spokesman of persistence and as a decelerator.
--Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
| Backdrop | The cold war and its accompanying atomic threat |
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Seagull Books A history of clouds | hans magnus enzensberger
