{"id":11732,"date":"2014-03-12T10:52:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11732"},"modified":"2014-03-12T10:52:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:52:14","slug":"michael-speiers-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/michael-speiers-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Speier’s Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HauptStadtStudio-Titel\"<\/a>Somewhere, be it N.Y. or D.C., Paris or Berlin, I am bound to cross paths with one of the most elegant German poets, & an urban nomad to boot: Michael Speier<\/strong>. It is always a great pleasure to spend an afternoon or a day together, to have a brotherly flaneur <\/em>to share time & talk. Baudelaire through the lens of Benjamin through the arete<\/em> of Celan with a dash of O\u2019Hara urbanity & Zukofsky musicality would be one way to describe the poetic sensibility of the man. \u00a0And when Michael isn\u2019t around he still is: there are his books of poems, his excellent poetry magazine Park<\/em> (created in & edited singlehandedly ever since 1976), his ongoing (since 1987)\u00a0\u00a0& incontournable<\/em>\u00a0scholarly work as the editor of the Celan-Jahrbuch, his many essays on Celan & others, his anthologies of contemporary German poetry & more. His latest volume of poems,\u00a0Haupt-Stadt-Studio<\/em>\u00a0(Aphaia-Verlag, 2012) needs translation in full (or, better still \u2014 a pitch to interested & adventurous young poet-scholars \u2014 someone should edit & translate a Selected Speier<\/em> for a US publisher). Here is a sample from the book, the opening poem from the Berlin section (a section called schlacht um berlin<\/em> \u2014 battle for [or around] Berlin) which has as its epigraph the lines: \u201cone should describe cities the way one does a thought or a feeling\u201d.<\/p>\n

WHY EXACTLY ONE SLEEPS we would like to know<\/span>
\n why exactly is data ever more often stowed away in clouds
\n<\/span>& we in the wadded vacuum of an airport waiting room<\/span>
\n why exactly berlin on the horizon just now<\/span>
\n tilts its notorious gray again: prognoses<\/span>
\n in which evening and morning blur<\/span>
\n but why shortly before milk this sucking light<\/span>
\n between berghain and paris bar (we\u2019d like to know)<\/span>
\n the elegance of air drag when one steps out<\/span>
\n into the off-<\/i> the o-pen between clear sense & heart damage<\/span>
\n after the arduously missed occasions<\/span>
\n between glasses and unspeakably fatuous eye baths<\/span><\/p>\n

naturally \u2014 one could counter \u2014 this depends on the<\/span>
\n occasions they don\u2019t distribute themselves evenly<\/span>
\n in space time & music or it depends on the<\/span>
\n unmanned documents with which<\/span>
\n they unscrew one\u2019s soul<\/span>
\n on miner-moths in the chestnut alleys
\n<\/span>of Stimmann\u2019s\u00a0 eternal eaves\u2019 height<\/span><\/p>\n

argue it all out \u2014 is it exactly forbidden<\/span>
\n to eat the past or to rattle<\/span>
\n piercings or concievablenesses<\/span>
\n given that the climate capsules keep whirring<\/span>
\n in the small ball that hovers near one\u2019s own head<\/span>
\n & one doesn\u2019t know why still direction mitte<\/span>
\n where the early light\u2019s on white & light <\/i>first name basis<\/span><\/p>\n

why then crack open & up to reveal<\/span>
\n (frangio ut pare facias) rather head home<\/span>
\n into the b\u00f6tzow biedermeier-bionade<\/span>
\n or swaggeringly sweep through the frankfurter<\/span>
\n & when the included ask<\/span>
\n where\u2019s wenck? tell them in the treasury<\/span>
\n & other bunkers here where we lie<\/span>
\n all shot to death in this palpebral angle<\/span>
\n having discontinued awareness some seven<\/span>
\n billion years ago already<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Park-Speier\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhere, be it N.Y. or D.C., Paris or Berlin, I am bound to cross paths with one of the most elegant German poets, & an urban nomad to boot: Michael Speier. It is always...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,91,103],"tags":[1508],"class_list":["post-11732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-michael-speier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11732"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11745,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11732\/revisions\/11745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}