The Art of Topiary: Poems

A collection of vivid, tightly knit poems from one of the most important contemporary poets writing in German. The Art of Topiary is the gorgeous product of a long and careful collaboration between Jan Wagner and American poet David Keplinger. With the care of master gardeners tending their plants, Wagner and Keplinger have shaped Wagner’s originals-acclaimed internationally, now in English for the first time-into precise, delightful, and highly modern translations. Along the way, the collection unfolds dialogues between discipline and freedom, sound and sense, faithfulness and improvisation. In these poems, formal structures are a corset loosened by each line of verse, a garden always pleasurably at risk of being overrun.

Compact, lightfooted, and curious, The Art of Topiary is the exciting American debut of a stunning and joyful voice in global literature.