Music While Drowning: German Expressionist Poems

The years 1910 - 1930 were traumatic ones for the German-speaking people. It began with a sense of being surrounded; they were soundly defeated in war and the empire of Austria-Hungary dismembered, there was the hyperinflation in the early twenties and the start of a depression at the end. As the title and the times would suggest, this collection of poems does not express a buoyant optimism. Expressions of positive emotions are rare and understated; the illustrations are woodcuts that drip with melancholy. The editors made an effort to include the poems of lesser-known writers; the poems are by Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Else Lasker-Schuler, Georg Trakl and Egon Schiele. These poems express the opposite reality of love poems, life looked at as something to be endured and tolerated rather than enjoyed.

This collection of German Expressionist poems is indeed a rare gem......most of the works in it were written just after WWI and the feelings of the German people themselves are almost in every line.........feelings of isolation, dejection, paranoia and the eternal struggle to live in a so-called "urban" society smack every page. This is a book for those who are truly interested in the art of poetry.