German Poetry Now: A bilingual online-anthology, featured by DAS GEDICHT chapbook
Bianca Döring
The flute
The flute is all over.
It’s got a hole.
Yesterday such a little
sharp droplet of spit
rammed itself into the
molly-coddled wood.
Wounded pride.
It whined through half of the night
and lamented like the
Holy Spirit: sacramento!
Christ-on-a-cracker!
Then this morning I look at it:
the wind was whistling through it
and twittered two tones too high
and a half-tone shy,
totally out of key.
I’ll send the whole thing off to Hamelin.
Where it’ll rot, abandoned.
translated by Paul-Henri Campbell
+ German Original / Das OriginalBianca Döring
Die Flöte
Es ist aus mit der Flöte.
Sie hat ein Loch.
Gestern rammte ein kleines
so ein scharfes
Spucketröpfchen sich ins
verzärtelte Holz.
Verletzter Stolz.
Es ätzte die halbe Nacht
und blökte wie der
heilige Geist: sacramento!
himmelarschunddonnerkeilundzwirn!
Heut morgen dann seh ich’s:
der Wind pfeift durch und
zwitschert zwei Töne zu hoch
und einen halben zu tief.
Alles schief.
Ich schicke das Ding nach Hameln.
Zum Vergammeln.
© Bianca Döring, Berlin
aus: DAS GEDICHT Bd. 22 / Oktober 2014
+ About the author / Zum Autor
Bianca Döring was born in 1957 in Schlitz/Vogelsberg (Hesse). She studied at the conservatory in Trossingen as well as at the Universities of Marburg and Kassel. After working in various jobs in kindergartens, geriatric care, nursing, and manufacturing, she established herself as a performance artist, musician, and painter. Her literary work has gained considerable attention and almost ubiquitous recognition. Bianca Döring was invited to prestigious residencies, such as the Academy of Palace Solitude in Stuttgart or the Künstlerhaus Edenkoben, an endowment created by the state Rhineland-Palatine that is particularly focused on poetry. She is a member of the German P.E.N. Center. Her poetry envisions intense subjectivities, voices that collide with our habitual perceptions of reality, and by derailing these perceptions, they lift the numbness of daily routines from us. Discussing her debut »Ein Flamingo, eine Wüste« (Frankfurt am Main 1990), the weekly newspaper Die Zeit wrote: »a bold beginning that undermines every usual routinized method of reading […] bizarre reckless images that are informed by Surrealism and exhibit the highest degree of musicality.«
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« im Archiv
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« is an online collection of contemporary German-language poetry in English translation. All poems were taken from issue no. 22 of the German poetry magazine DAS GEDICHT, focused on the Poetry of Things. New English translations by Paul-Henri Campbell as well as the German originals are published here every Wednesday. All poems of this online-collection are also published in a special print-edition. In order to read previous poems in this series, click here.
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« ist eine Online-Sammlung zeitgenössischer deutschsprachiger Dinggedichte in englischer Übersetzung. Alle Texte sind Band 22 der Zeitschrift DAS GEDICHT entnommen. Jeden Mittwoch erscheint ein neues Gedicht, das von Paul-Henri Campbell ins Englische übertragen wurde, zusammen mit dem deutschen Original. Die Beiträge dieser Online-Anthologie gibt es auch als Sonderausgabe in Buchform. Alle bereits erschienenen Folgen von »Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« finden Sie hier.
»Lustful Things – Geile Sachen!« im Archiv
