Poetic Affairs

Poetic Affairs deals with the complex and fascinating interface between literature and life through the prism of the lives and works of three outstanding poets: the German-Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan (19201970); the Leningrad native, U.S. poet laureate, and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Brodsky (19401996); and Germany's premier contemporary poet, Durs Grnbein (born 1962). Focusing on their poetic dialogues with such interlocutors as Shakespeare, Seneca, and Byron, respectivelyveritable love affairs unfolding in and through poetryEskin offers unprecedented readings of Celan's, Brodsky's, and Grnbein's lives and works and discloses the ways in which poetry articulates and remains faithful to the manifold "truths"historical, political, poetic, eroticdetermining human existence.