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Unread 06-19-2019, 11:49 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Hi Julie,

You make a compelling case, and I did like your comparison to the video game. Frankly, I didn't read the pamphlet's poems - I've just finished 500-odd pages of Trakl - I only scanned through the prefatory materials by James Wright, whom I like, and Bly, whom I don't much but others do. I didn't find the complete poems as monotonous as this pamphlet evidently is. The early poems are quite Catholic, opening up later into something more ecumenical. Death is a constant; he was pretty clearly depressive if not bipolar, and likely committed suicide (cocaine OD) after his early experience of WW I. But yes, he has a mental furniture, and in this pamphlet it seems relentless, not to say caricatural, as you establish.
In case you'd like (!) to see one more short Trakl poem, here's "Sebastian im Traum" translated by the gifted Michael Hamburger: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...ontentId=28696 It has some of the color palette you indicate, but used perhaps more effectively - dark stair, for instance.

Cheers,
John
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