Selected Poems

Not even the words of the brilliant Brecht could overcome printing errors. Several of the German poems suffer from a misaligned margin, poetically severing words or truncating lines. Your experience may be different?

If you know anything about Bertolt Brecht, "poet" has to sound like a wild stretch. We know him as a playwright. And as a playwright, he disliked emotion; his goal was to make audiences think. In his poems, though, he could balance rationality and emotion. In “Parting,” he could even acknowledge — and work around — political differences and the irony that his prominence has made him economically comfortable:We embrace.Rich cloth under my fingersWhile yours touch poor fabric.A quick embraceYou were invited for dinnerWhile the minions of law are after me.We talk about the weather and ourLasting friendship. Anything elseWould be too bitter.Looking back, Brecht seems less like a radical, more like … well, some of us. You could almost say that the writer who died in 1956 is a citizen of the 21st century. How? First, he had no use for the writer as solitary hero. Or of solitary heroes of any kind, which he viewed — as some of us do — as media creations. As he wrote:The young Alexander conquered India.Was he alone?Caesar beat the Gauls.Did he not have even a cook with him?Philip of Spain wept when his armadaWent down. Was he the only one to weep?Frederick the Second won the Seven Year’s War. WhoElse won it?Every page a victory.Who cooked the feast for the victors?Every ten years a great man?Who paid the bill?Good question: Who pays the bill?We have come to know what Brecht knew: the little people. They are Brecht’s great concern, and now, thanks more to the Internet than any other media, we can’t help but be aware of them. The poor. The hungry. The old and shoved aside. Kids. And you can say, yeah, but he had a radical point-of-view about the disenfranchised and overlooked. Well, how radical, really, is this: “First feed the face. Then talk right and wrong.”The theme Brecht is largely working out in his poems — see if this doesn’t resonate a little for you — is just as simple: How do you live an ethical life in a corrupt society?For me, it’s his willingness to be as hard on himself as he is on those who keep The People down that makes Brecht much more than a propagandist. How often, for example, have you felt like this:Traveling in a comfortable carDown a rainy road in the countryWe saw a ragged fellow at nightfallSignal to us for a ride, with a low bow.We had a roof and we had room and we drove onAnd we heard me say, in a grumpy voice: No,we can’t take anyone with us.We had gone on a long way, perhaps a day’s marchWhen suddenly I was shocked by this voice of mineThis behavior of mine and thisWhole world.If the role of the poet is to articulate thoughts and emotions we share but cannot say, Bertolt Brecht is an important poet. Shockingly accessible. Surprisingly touching. And, more often than you might have thought, a chronicler of anxieties very much like ours.Consider this: In 1939, Brecht wrote “To Those Who Follow in Our Wake.” Some excerpts…I would happily be wise.The old books teach us what wisdom is:To retreat from the strife of the worldTo live out the brief time that is your lotWithout fearTo make your way without violenceTo repay evil with good —The wise do not seek to satisfy their desires,But to forget them.But I cannot heed this:Truly I live in dark times!….There was little I could do. But without meThe rulers sat more securely, or so I hoped.And so passedThe time given to me on earth.But you, when at last the time comesThat man can aid his fellow man,Should think upon usWith leniency.

works in translation are the bread of my life. h.r. hays work on these poems is of the most turgid kind. brecht's poetry is in german sublime. here the images and the sensibility are cloaked in impenetrably childish english idiom. occasionally there is a turn of phrase or an enlightened insight but mostly the work is childish and wooden.

These 50 poems were published in 1947, almost a decade before Brecht's death. It is thus not quite the overview of the poet's work that we might want (hence the missing star). But Brecht was consulted, and the outcome is an extraordinarily poised selection that moves away from the lyrics and Kiplingesque ballads of the early work through the theatre song-texts to the poems of the 1930s, many written in exile, that cannot but look unflinchingly at the political situation (though Brecht never surrenders his laconic stance). It is certainly a poignant progression. The introduction by the translator, H. R. Hays, is an outstanding appraisal of Brecht's creative character and work - terse and to the point; and some of the translations, far from being turgid as some (below) maintain, fall over backwards to reproduce Brecht's intricate rhythms, syllable counts and alternations of strong and weak line-endings - something less valued by later translators. Just look at 'Nanna's Song'! There are 2500 poems or so in Jan Knopf's recent German collection (2007), and even when we have them complete in English, we shall still need orientating selections. I can think of not better one to start with than this.

Live this book! Original poem with English translation on the opposite page. A great book for many reasons but the translations are even a great way to see how the language works alongside English so great for any German/English student... and it's Brecht.. what's not to love!

First printed many years ago, this selection of Brecht poems is still well worth having. A bilingual edition, it offers the reader the chance to savour a wide range of Brecht's work, from the early ballads and songs, through the highly politically engaged work to later more rueful pieces. Much reviled by those for whom communism is a discredited and mistaken social philosophy, Brecht has plenty to offer anyone with an ounce of interest in the question of how the world might be made a better place (among many other things). His fierce cunning intelligence and sheer poetic range make him one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.Despite the efforts of John Fuegi in his biographical character-assassination attempts on the poet-playwright's reputation, Brecht deserves to be judged on his work and not on the highly controversial claims of a man who was once an ardent promoter of the Brecht cause and helped set up the Brecht Yearbook, but who has since turned against the man.

I have recommended this anthology to a number of my friends. Hays' translations seem to my reading to be fresh and vital, maintaining a level of success throughout better than does the standard Methuen collected translations edited by Willett and Mannheim. Only Michael Hamburger there satisfies me to the same extent. Hays translations carry an innate sense of pulse and structure, and with apparent ease can hit when required on colloquial phrasing appropriate to the tone; this without one feeling any strain or lurch into gamey English. In other words, he can follow Brecht through variations in register.Hayes was a poet himself, and sometimes it can be the lesser poet who can be the greater translator. It is important to know that Brecht's play Mother Courage and her Children first appeared in English in a translation by Hays in New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1941, the same year as the play's first production (in its original German) in Zurich.It's great to have this 1947 book in fresh new paperback. If you are interested in Brecht or twentieth century poetry, I very strongly recommend it.