Go to amazon.com

Beloved Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (193189) began his career in the early 1950s as a poet. Over the next decade, Bernhard wrote thousands of poems and published four volumes of intensely wrought and increasingly personal verse, with such titles asOn Earth and in Hell, InHoraMortis, andUnder the Iron of the Moon. Bernhards early poetry, bearing the influence of GeorgTrakl, begins with a deep connection to his Austrian homeland. As his poems saw publication and recognition, Bernhard seemed always on the verge of joining the ranks ofIngeborgBachmann, PaulCelan, and other young post-war poets writing in German. During this time, however, his poems became increasingly obsessive, filled with anundulantself-pity, counterpointed by a defamatory,bardicvoice utterly estranged from his country, all of which resulted in a magisterial work of anti-poetryone that represents Bernhards own harrowing experience, with the leitmotif ofsuccessfailure, that makes his fiction such a pleasure.

For all of these reasons, Bernhards Collected Poems, translated into English for the first time by James Reidel, is a key to understanding the irascible black comedy found in virtually all of Bernhards writingseven down to his last will and testament.There is much to be found in these pages for Bernhard fans of every stripe.