Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees

<p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> published in Arc's flagship translation series 'Visible Poets' combines the poet's unerring instinct for the surprising perspective on commonplace objects or events - plants animals landscapes - with a mischievous delight in the detail of the absurd the precarious balance. Wagner is a vigilant yet playful chronicler of the quotidian his meticulous handling of image and sound forging a worldly almost luminous palpability. Intensely curious constantly attentive to novel or unanticipated possibilities afforded by traditional forms Wagner's poems celebrate what he has called 'our steaming glowing odorous noisy world'.</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style=color: rgba(96 96 96 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Jan Wagner's poems start in particular things creatures persons circumstances and with wit and compassion open into novelty. In the reader's mind they are still opening as they end. Furthermore even by Arc's high standards this is an exceptionally successful face-to-face of poet and poet-translator. Look left look right: pleasure on both sides!</span></blockquote><p><span style=color: rgba(96 96 96 1); background-color: inherit>David Constantine</span></p><blockquote><span style=color: rgba(96 96 96 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Whether his subject is fennel or frogs the Amish or Evel Knievel Jan Wagner's combination of wit irony lyrical genius and philosophical legerdemain illumine and renew our world in the most surprising ways. </span><em style=color: rgba(96 96 96 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Self Portrait with a Swarm of Bees</em><span style=color: rgba(96 96 96 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> daringly and imaginatively translated from the German by Iain Galbraith confirms Wagner as one of Europe's finest poets a true magus of language.</span></blockquote><p><span style=color: rgba(96 96 96 1); background-color: inherit>John Burnside</span></p><p></p>