Widely celebrated as the greatest German playwright of the twentieth
century, Bertolt Brecht was also, as George Steiner observed, "that
very rare phenomenon, a great poet, for whom poetry is an almost
everyday visitation and drawing of breath." Hugely prolific,
Brecht also wrote more than two thousand poems--though fewer than
half were published in his lifetime, and early translations were
heavily censored. Now, award-winning translators David Constantine
and Tom Kuhn have heroically translated more than 1,200 poems in the
most comprehensive English collection of Brecht's poetry to date.
Written between 1913 and 1956, these poems celebrate Brecht's
unquenchable "love of life, the desire for better and more of
it," and reflect the technical virtuosity of an artist driven by
bitter and violent politics, as well as by the untrammeled forces of
love and erotic desire. A monumental achievement and a reclamation,
The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht is a must-have for any
lover of twentieth-century poetry.