Pace good Paul. Thank you for posting this poetic reflection. For me, too, it is a memorable image. My father Bob Howse, a venerable newspaper editor, liked to cover Bede's sparrow in Christmas editorials. Dad is now retired and writes poetry.

I am reading it now and am impressed by the scholarship and artistry of this annotated translation. Strongly visual, painterly work, it also reads well aloud. I know little of Austrian/German poetry but you trace interesting connections to Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, etc. Glad to have found this.

Thank you, I've just ordered a copy. It will be my next read.

A pleasure to meet you, Michael. I'm a writer in Terence Bay, a Canadian fishing village. I self-publish via Amazon, IngramSpark, tolino (Germany), etc. Bookshops seldom stock but ~40% of my sales are to libraries, especially in North America, Ireland, New Zealand. I'm always happy to compare notes.

I write novels about working-class characters in the Soviet/post-Soviet world. I would like to join the list, please!

#literaryfiction

Thanks! I would like to be added as well.

👋 I am from Canada but have enjoyed wonderful connections with people from South Africa and Namibia since visiting both countries on a book tour in May-June 2024. Pleased to be here with you all! 🇿🇦🇳🇦🇨🇦