One lark, one horse Poems

Hofmann has been wondrously prolific as a translator of German literature Peter Stamm, Hans Fallada, Joseph Roth while also somehow finding time to write reviews and essays. This is his fifth poetry collection, though, given everything else he's accomplished, his first in 20 years. The voice remains unmistakable: urbane, cosmopolitan, acutely self-conscious, ironic, and disillusioned (assuming he once had illusions). The titles are telling; place names and the names of artists and writers predominate. Hofmann is often on the move, leaving a town he sounds eager to put behind him. And when he isn't leaving, the poem lists battered possessions, as if his life were a table of contents, as if he can't bear to articulate the losses and instead lists life's lost-and-found. The short poem, Night, ends where so many seem to end, in an embarrassment of poverty. This embarrassment is his subject; he is both chronicler and connoisseur. The longer, more satisfying and typical Sankt Gerog ends, Twilit, doubtful, shady, questionable. Something. Every once in a while, that Something is something else.--Michael Autrey Copyright 2019 Booklist

This U.S. publication of Hofmann's fifth collection since 1983--a UK edition appeared in 2018--finds the noted critic and translator pondering the realization that the world he's known for decades has vanished. Hofmann's lyrical impressions of places once lived in or passed through, from London to Warsaw to Venice, CA, eschew nostalgic reverie and are instead tempered by a journalistic focus on homely details, whether human-made ("The old bones of sugar refineries") or natural ("The pocked mud glistening with thousands of alert little mud-crabs"). Sooner or later, dispassion gives way to judgment, and when infused with the poet's signature candor and wit ("the prettier the place/ the uglier the music"). Hofmann's "parlous notions, messages, statements, stylings on the edge of extinction" alert us to the consequences of apathy and self-absorption, of allowing our consciousness to be co-opted by the "whatever world of passwords, streaming and clouds." VERDICT Hofmann's condensed, serrated screeds against a gradually dehumanizing culture might seem unduly dyspeptic to some readers, but others will appreciate their unglossed vision and resistance to passive acceptance.--Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY