Overview

"The fifteen poems in this selection by the Swiss poet Florian Vetsch - documentarian of Ira Cohen and the American beat poets, traveller, organizer of cross-cultural books and literary events - are often playful. He writes about beer; he writes about wine, riffing on ""A Case of You"" by Joni Mitchell; he writes about being invaded by dead poets. And then he's not joking: he writes about an old photograph of his mother as a young woman before WW2; a poem for the American journalist Mary Colvin, assassinated in Syria by the Assad regime; and then ""The Flaying of Marsyas"", protesting against the frightful punishments inflicted on those artists, mystics or philosophers who challenge the ruling coteries of gods, priests, and politicians. In this small collection Vetsch covers an astonishing range of our ways of being alive. It wears its playfulness lightly - pff-tok! says the beer-can; excuse me while I kiss the sky - And then it looks at history, the other things we do. Vetsch moves on and we move with him, remembering the colour of rust and blood staining river water."

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Reviews

Vetsch [himself] ... is a kind of relay where the most diverse paths cross ... a translator, literally, from English and French, but also figuratively - a mediator, teacher, critic, editor, organizer, matchmaker. One could compare him with Long John Silver, the legendary pirate from Stevenson's Treasure Island, to whom he also dedicated a poem, lovable, engaging, seductive, but still a buccaneer through and through; contradictory, uniting, wrapped in misleading cloaks. A smuggler, a trickster, a go-between ... [whose] poems encourage you to keep reading, always reading differently, always navigating further. - David Signer, Swiss Month

Author Information

Florian Vetsch grew up in Buchs SG and in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he attended the Kantonsschule am Burggraben. He studied philosophy, German and literary criticism in Zurich and received his doctorate in 1991. He now teaches German and philosophy at the Kantonsschule am Burggraben. He has published poetry, diaries, essays, anthologies and translations by Paul Bowles, Ira Cohen, Jan Heller Levi, Mohammed Mrabet and others. From 2007 to 2022 he led the literary event series Noisma in the Kult-Bau in St. Gallen together with Gallus Frei, Daniel Fuchs and Clemens Umbricht. Vetsch's Board Game (1986) was staged and printed in Lenzburg in April 2022 by the draftsman and object artist Rolf Winnewisser, demonstrating the enduring relevance of Vetsch's poetry. Douglas Spangle, born in Roanoke, Virginia, and raised in a Park Service family, spent his childhood in various western states before his family moved overseas. He finished high school in Ankara, Turkey, and attended University of Maryland's Munich Campus (1968-1971). He spent the next four years as a stagehand at the M�nchener Kammerspiele Schauspielhaus. He has been involved in all aspects of Portland's poetry scene, curating city-wide poetry and cultural events such as ArtQuake, co-editing Rain City Review, hosting open mic series at Satyricon and other venues, hosting the widely-known, decade-long open mic at Caf� Lena. His many chapbooks include a translation of Friedrich H�lderlin's poetry, Blood and Wine (Fly Leaf editions, 2008). Author of A White Concrete Day: Poems, 1978-2013, and recipient of Oregon Literary Arts' Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award, he is currently translating Swiss authors Christoph Keller, Florian Vetsch, and Clemens Umbricht for Gobshite Quarterly and several Swiss anthologies.

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