Poetic Affairs

"Poetic Affairs" deals with the complex and fascinating interface between literature and life through the prism of the lives and works of three outstanding poets: the German-Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan (1920-1970); the Leningrad native, U.S. poet laureate, and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996); and Germany's premier contemporary poet, Durs Grunbein (born 1962). Focusing on their poetic dialogues with such interlocutors as Shakespeare, Seneca, and Byron, respectively--veritable love affairs unfolding in and through poetry--Eskin offers unprecedented readings of Celan's, Brodsky's, and Grunbein's lives and works and discloses the ways in which poetry articulates and remains faithful to the manifold "truths"--historical, political, poetic, erotic--determining human existence.