Garden of Theophrastus: Selected Poems

This new edition of The Garden of Theophrastus brings back into print one of Germany’s finest recent poets, in translations by his close friend Michael Hamburger. Peter Huchel (1903-1981) wrote amidst the political turmoil of twentieth-century Germany before the country’s re-unification. A highly influential figure in the former East Germany, he edited the magazine Sinn und Form there until 1962 but was dismissed for indulging too ‘liberal’ a policy. His poetry has its roots in Brandenburg, where the formative years of his childhood were spent. Through the hardship of the Second World War and its vexed aftermath, culminating in his exile to West Germany in 1971, he maintained a poetry of humane commitment, formal invention and precision.