Many of the poems in Hofmann's impressive new collection return to the subject of his father, the German novelist Gert Hofmann. In 1993 Gert Hofmann died, and the poems written since that time reflect the evolution of a complex relationship: frankness and factuality are tempered by grief, pity, pain, and bemusement. But whatever the subject matter, whatever the real or imagined impetus or poetic impulse, the lyrics throughout Approximately Nowhere are expertly conveyed in a flowing style and a variety of tones.
Author
Michael Hofmann is a German-born, British-educated poet and translator. He is the author of two books of essays and five books of poems, most recently One Lark, One Horse. Among his translations are plays by Bertolt Brecht and Patrick Süskind; the selected poems of Durs Grünbein and Gottfried Benn; and novels and stories by, among others, Franz Kafka; Peter Stamm; his father, Gert Hofmann; and fourteen books by Joseph Roth. He has translated several books for NYRB Classics, including Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Jakob Wassermann’s My Marriage, and Gert Ledig’s Stalin Front, Kurt Tucholsky’s Castle Gripsholm, and edited The Voyage That Never Ends, an anthology of writing by Malcolm Lowry. He teaches in the English Department at the University of Florida. He is the son of German novelist Gert Hofmann (1931-1993).
