A new kind of poetry for me. The “thing” poems are somehow very abstract but also very tangible. There is, still, a harshness as the descriptions seemingly lack a personal narrative and focus solely on what’s at hand. More than most poetry I have read, I always was unsure if I was reading it “correctly”.

It is definitely mind expanding without trying to be outrageous. In fact it is very exact and somewhat traditional in its layout. ( )

Read the introduction and a few of my favorite poems. I'm attached to the Andy Gaus and Leishman/Spender translations, but Cadora's translations are indisputably excellent. I'd love to see what he would make of "Requiem for a Woman," but that isn't included in this collection.

[For Czeslaw Milosz] the symbolist enterprise, Rilke's hushed diction, the perhaps the drama of the Duino Elegies were the world of writers who knew the cathedral was empty, but couldn't leave and were composing poems of great vertical longing to the empty air. (xvi)

From endless passing of the bars his gaze
has wearied - there is no more it can hold.
There seem to be a thousand bars always,
and past those thousand bars there is no world.
(first stanza of The Panther, 75)

Mooie uitgave en vooral goede tekstcommentaar. En natuurlijk prachtige "dinggedichten", in het bijzonder die over zijn reis in Vlaanderen. ( )