KARL KROLOW (1915-1999)
Krolow’s large body of work—thousands of signature poems (3 volumes of Selected Poems!), haunting prose, criticism of the highest caliber, and sublime translations, from the Spanish & English, all charting a major direction for German literature—will endure as long as the German language does. Founding member of the Gruppe 47, which sought to cleanse the language & literature of Nazi viruses, President of The Academy of Language & Literature for three memorable years, Krolow also championed the works of many other writers, among them Paul Celan & Nelly Sachs, whose Jewish roots did not exactly call forth much sympathy from a large contingent of the writing community, to put it mildly. Few German writers move readers to such fervor and regard, who are drawn especially to Krolow’s gravity of concerns and witness-bearing ways to a century of death and destruction.
(Full disclosure: Krolow wrote the afterword to Friebert’s 1st collection of German poems and allowed him ongoing access to Krolow’s ways with poems and supervised many a translation.)
Special thanks to Karl Krolow & Suhrkamp Verlag/Berlin for permission to publish these poems.
