Skip to main content

Distributed for Seagull Books

Rubble Flora

Selected Poems

Rubble Flora is a selection of poems from the distinguished, half-century-long career of German poet Volker Braun. Born in the former East Germany, Braun is a humane, witty, brave, and disappointed poet. In the East, his poetry upheld the voice of the individual imagination and identified with a utopian possibility that never became reality. He might be said to have found a truly singular voice amid the colossal upheavals of 1989—exploring the triumph of capitalism and the languages of advertising, terror, politics, and war. At the same time, Braun is a sensual poet in tune with the natural landscape. He has his own touchstones in world literature, and many of his poems set quotations from Rimbaud, Shakespeare, and Brecht into his own context, where they work as ironic illuminations of a present plight. The literary principle of his work lies in the friction of these different voices, whether cast into free form, collage, or classical verse. Cumulatively, Rubble Flora offers a searing vision of these transformative decades.

144 pages | 5 x 8 1/2 | © 2014

The German List

Poetry


Seagull Books image

View all books from Seagull Books

Reviews

“A book-length collection of Braun’s poetry is long, long overdue. . . . Rubble Flora is a most welcome volume and certainly essential for anyone interested in modern German poetry, as well as (thoughtfully) politically engaged poetry.”

Complete Review

“An excellent introduction to Braun’s work. . . . As the reader progresses through Rubble Flora, he or she is offered what amounts to a poetic history of the forms of life through which Braun has lived: the Third Reich (into which he was born); the German Democratic Republic (in which he grew up and worked, a critical socialist); German unification and the tensions of capitalism (which he has witnessed as a critical citizen of the new Germany). It is very good to see a poem dedicated to its translator, incidentally, which is one of the many ways in which this book makes connections.”

Poetry Salzburg Review

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Prussia, Pleasure Garden

Rubble Flora

The Gründel

Demand

An Account of Despair

The Life and Times of Volker Braun

At Dawn

Oyesters

Is It Too Soon. Is It Too Late

Afternoon

Definition

Italian Night

Prussia, Pleasure Garden

Fief

Innermost Africa

Daydream

Walter Benjamin in the Pyrenees

Dark Places

Woken out of Dogmatic Slumber

Breakfast

Another Part of the Heath

Gallery of Antiquities

From The Zig-Zag Bridge

The Zig-Zag Bridge

Turning Point

The Cinnamon Forest

The Muddy Levels

Builder on the Stalinallee

New Wallpaper

The Colony

Prologue for the Opening of the Fortieth Season of the Berliner Ensemble on 11 October 1989

2. The Massacre of Illusions

O Chicago! O Contradiction!

Property

9 November

My Brother

Theatre of the Dead

Ambra

End of October in August

Marlboro Is Red. Red Is Marlboro

West Shore

Balance

Pliny Sends Greetings to Tacitus

The Magma in the Heart of the Tuareg

6. 5.1996

Hill of the Dead

Bay of the Dead

After the Massacre of Illusions

Lagerfeld

Coined for the Ruling Class

From Dances of Death

Utopia

Communism

Common Ownership

Ideology

Class Struggle

Solidarity

Art

3. Findings

Pontine Marshes

Paradiso

Berlin-Mitte

Tides

When He Could See Again

Shakespeare Shuttle

World Power

Bed for the Night with Su Tung-P’o (1036–1101)

The Empire Considers a Map of the World

Ultimatum to Parsley Island

The Centre

Here’s to the Good Times! For Sir Philip Sidney

De vita beata. After Jaime Gil de Biedma

Hidden

The Lovers. Before Dante

My Fear

Untimely

Everywhere the Lights are Going Out

The Last-Shift Mass

Cashing Up

Iguanas

Wilderness

Findings

Glut

The Slum-Dwellers of Medellin Take Possession of the Great Escalator 27 December 2011

Exequies

Conversation about the Trees in Gezi Park

Demon

Notes

Translations and Dates

Sources

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press