Poems

This volume, the first edition in English of Hermann Hesse’s poetry, begins to correct an unexplainable oversight. For if the author of Narcissus and Goldmund and The Journey to the East had never written a single novel, his poems alone would have established him as a distinctly eloquent voice.

James Wright, himself increasingly recognized as one of the finest poets writing today, has selected and translated thirty-one poems from Die Gedichte (Collected Poems). The results make it plain that the burden of Hesse’s songs, and his songfulness, is genuinely congenial to Wright.

“Poetry is what is lost in translation.” Here is one collaboration that transcends that maxim.