in field latin

in field latin or in other words: to exist in a field of language, and at the same time explore a landscape’s legends, how they come to one’s ears, in walks, in whispers, in silence.

Lutz Seiler’s new poems, written between 2004 and 2010, set off on expeditions into the borderlands surrounding Berlin, into the middle of the »syntax of this region«, marked by time’s relentless change.

At every step of the way the musical power of the poems is proven – in field latin Lutz Seiler strikes the perfect note for the most sincere exaggerations of poetry: for the wondrous history of the »very first affection« which occurred when shadows were still »small black units of pay«. Or the odysseys of the »footonauts«, equal only to the Argonauts in loyalty and persistence. And last but not least, the story of the pretty outcast Aranka who »sang from out of the hollows of her knees«. Legends spoken in field latin.

Read an English excerpt in Asymptote.

Read an interview with Alexander Booth, who translated in field latin into English for Seagull Books, in which he discusses translating Lutz Seiler, which earned him a PEN Heim Translation Fund Grant in 2012.

»Seiler has masterful command of a subtle style [...], both skittish & firm in its diction and movement, tense and tensile in its branching extensions and jittery vertiginous drops. One could call it elliptical, but it’s more a kind of binocular vision, with one lens ground for cosmic focus and the other for a microscope. The voicing of such vision shifts from ecstatic to abject; the idiom is constantly sliding, smearing, merging to connect phenomena and feeling in work that opens a new approach in the ecological awareness currently driving poetry on both sides of the Atlantic. Seiler has effectively rewired the lyric for the twenty-first century, tuning the dial of the poetic to its lower frequencies, where the signal can pass through walls.« Poetry Magazine

»A careful arrangement of seven sections, each including between one and eleven poems, allows Seiler’s poetry to speak for its richness, assertions visible like reflected, projected light through a prism. At times dense, and at other times utterly accessible and distilled, in field latin is as much about playfulness in themes and core ideas as it is about challenge and a personalized representation of the self.« Queen Mobs Teahouse

»One does not quickly finish reading these beautiful and important poems.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung