- Paperback: 112 pages
- Publisher: New Directions (Sep 25 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0811217264
- ISBN-13: 978-0811217262
- Product Dimensions: 25.5 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #634,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
A totally original book of poems—haunting, profound, nonsensical, surreal—at moments even painful. -- Robert Leiter, Jewish Exponent
One of America's foremost experimental poets. -- Publishers Weekly
Sebald's elliptical 'micropoems' evoke the metaphysical bewilderment Sebald knew so well...deeply consonant with his deepest impulses as a writer. -- The New Republic
One of America's foremost experimental poets. -- Publishers Weekly
Sebald's elliptical 'micropoems' evoke the metaphysical bewilderment Sebald knew so well...deeply consonant with his deepest impulses as a writer. -- The New Republic
Book Description
For a number of years until his death in 2001, W. G. Sebald and the German artist Jan Peter Tripp exchanged poems and lithographs. Unrecounted is the result of this long artistic friendship a creative dialogue inspired by shared concerns. Sebald's words and Tripp's images speak of moments salvaged from time passing, of our eyes bearing witness, and of memory and remembrance. And to quote the critic Andrea Kohler: this poem of gazes has become a memorial, a bequeathal. If Sebald never tired of tracing the destinations of his soul-mates among writers, outsiders and emigrants in his sentences endlessly meandering through space and time, this legacy of his has the density of epitaphs.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
WG Sebald in the Guise of a Poet, Sep 15 2005
By Grady Harp - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Unrecounted (Hardcover)
UNRECOUNTED is a collaborative work by the deceased and sorely missed WG Sebald and his life long artist friend Jan Peter Tripp. Together they blocked 33 poems and 33 lithographs on apposing pages that were meant to create a sense of communication. In Sebald's words "The longer I look at the pictures of Jan Peter Tripp, the better I understand that behind the illusions of the surface, a dread-inspiring depth is concealed. It is the metaphysical lining of reality, so to speak."As a devoted reader of all of Sebald's output I was eagerly looking forward to yet another posthumous document from this astonishingly fine writer. What is in this handsome volume is not really 'poetry' but rather brief haiku-like musings. Not that they aren't lovely, it is just that they are not up to the challenging standards of his novels. Still one is left with a satisfied feeling having read this (sideways printed) book of thoughts. The art of Tripp is stunning - eyes of famous writers and thinkers. In the end, in Sebald's own critical self examination, these works are "time lost, the pain of remembering, and the figure of death". As such, they gain more meaning. Grady Harp, September 05
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like an unknown trunk with a stranger's garments in it, Jun 1 2005
By Kevin Killian - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Unrecounted (Hardcover)
My first thought was that Sebald (1944-2001) might have been a great novelist but he wasn't too good as a poet. And my second thought was that the good people at New Directions are really milking his posthumous fame to try to sell this puzzling "keepsake," as they call it, for $22.95, when it is so manifestly inferior to his other books. But luckily I kept the book on top of my desk for awhile and presently found myself returning to it again and again, trying to puzzle out what made it different than other books of poetry I had read. These "micropoems," as the translator calls them, do creep under your skin.Here's one:
The house
in the night
through the windows
the flickering light of
flames
That's it! As New Directions lays them out, these lines are all centered a la Michael McClure (it's hard to tell if Sebald planned this effect.) By the way the translator (Michael Hamburger) must be British and I wonder what a good US translator could have done with the German of these poems which the editor has supplied as an appendix for our eluctation at the back of the book. They are so short you could copy them all out on your lunch hour, but they gain weight and resonance by their placement next to the lithographs that inspired them-33 portraits by Sebald's best friend Jan-Peter Tripp) of people's eyes. (A lot of the poetry is about questions of seeing, perception, realization, etc) I thought I recognized some of the faces and I was right in one case only. The eyes are mostly those of famous artists (Francis Bacon, rembrandt, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman) and writers (Capote, Borges, Burroughs) and some of the juxtapositions attain a transparency as luminous as ice water. But you don't find out whose eyes they are until the end, so the volume has the aspect of a parlor game to it. By the way, check out page 74. It says those are the eyes of Proust, but they look like Rex Harrison to me!
So you're reading these haiku and puzzling over whose eyes are whose and before you know it, you are swept away into the land of the Unerzahlt for the ride of a lifetime.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unrecounted by W. G. Sebald, Mar 3 2012
By PL "Parrish" - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Unrecounted (Paperback)
Some books let you in from the turning of the title page, others leave you as though on the doorstep, a foot in the door, not sure of welcome, you're going to have to earn your entrance. Unrecounted is definitely one of the latter, you'll peruse the images and accompanying poems, eyes gliding off the eyes on the page to the words and back again, making connections, trying to find routes into its dialogue but this is ideolectic, the patterns here are those of an individual, there probably are reference points, but like all reference points, they act as signposts to something - not the thing itself.Most of the poems are around the 20 word mark or less and although they do not have a direct relationship to the pictures, act as a dialogue between the two, with some offering a possible greater clarity to us as onlookers than others
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