Modern and Contemporary Swiss Poetry: An Anthology - Urs Allemann, Arno Camenisch, Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Chessex, Adelheid Duvanel, Claire Genoux, Philippe Jaccottet, Gerhard Meier, Klaus Merz, Giorgio Orelli, Giovanni Orelli, Anne Perrier...

Modern and Contemporary Swiss Poetry: An Anthology, Ed. by Luzius Keller, Dalkey Achive Press, 2012.

Featuring the work of some of the greatest poets of the twentieth century as well as their contemporary counterparts, this anthology is unique in bringing together a broad selection of Switzerland's greatest authors in all of the country's major languages. Featuring Urs Allemann, Arno Camenisch, Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Chessex, Adelheid Duvanel, Claire Genoux, Philippe Jaccottet, Gerhard Meier, Klaus Merz, Giorgio Orelli, Giovanni Orelli, and Anne Perrier, among many others—most of whose work has never before been available in English translation—this overview of Swiss poetry stands as the ideal introduction to an undervalued and idiosyncratic force in international literature, at the forefront of many of the most influential literary movements, be they traditional or experimental.

 

Excerpt

From the Introduction by Luzius Keller:

Switzerland is no borderland, but it is a land of borders: national borders, cantonal borders, community borders, linguistic borders—some barely noticeable, others very real impediments to the social coexistence of the regions and their inhabitants. For the poets as well. Certainly, Fabio Pusterla has translated Philippe Jaccottet and Corinna Bille; Giorgio Orelli, Andri Peer; Andri Peer, Mauric Chappaz; José-Flore Tappy, Erika Burkart; Donata Berra, Klaus Merz . . . Certainly, Elisabeth Meyland and Nilaus Meienberg listen to Blaise Cendrars; Andri Peer to Albin Zollinger; Frédéric Wandelère or Vanni Bianconi to everything that goes on around them . . . Certainly, the blackbird sings (and dies) in Gerhard Meier and in

Giorgio Orelli, and Fabio Pusterla and Leta Semadeni give voice to the sorrow of slaughtered cattle. And yet—in spite of all the efforts of cultural policy, of collective appearances in anthologies and other publications, at literature conferences, at readings or round-table discussions—one still cannot speak of a specifically Swiss poetry. Fortunately, we must admit—since where the poet is given a measuring-stick, he runs the risk of losing his own measure, his own voice. The measuring-out of one's own space and its borders is addressed in the poems of Bernadette Lerjen-Sarbach, in the dialect of the Upper Valais, a language which lies, for not a few Swiss-German ears, beyond the frontier of the comprehensible. Poetry, however, knows no borders. She opens herself to every ear.