Flight and Metamorphosis: Poems
About this ebook
So far out, in the open,
cushioned in sleep.
In flight from the land
with love's heavy luggage.
A butterfly-zone of dreams
like an open parasol
held up against the truth.
Flight and Metamorphosis marks the culmination of Nelly Sachs's development as a poet. Sachs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, speaks from her own condition as a refugee from Nazi Germany—her loneliness while living in a small Stockholm flat with her elderly mother; her exile, her alienation, her feelings of romantic bereavement; and her search for the divine. Forced onto a journey of endless change, Sachs created her own path forward.
From these sublime poems, she emerges as a visionary, one who harnesses language's essential power to create and transform our world. Joshua Weiner's translations (with Linda B. Parshall) are the first in more than half a century to elucidate Sachs's enduring poetic power and relevance.
About the author
Nelly Sachs (1891–1970) was a dramatist and poet. Born into a Jewish family in Berlin, she was forced to flee Germany with her mother in 1940 and escaped to Sweden, where she worked as a translator. Her collections of poetry include In the Habitations of Death, Eclipse of Stars, and And No One Knows Where to Go . She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.
Joshua Weiner is a poet and translator. His books include Berlin Notebook: Where Are the Refugees? and The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish, and, as editor, At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn. From 1997 to 2021 he served as the poetry editor at Tikkun magazine. He is a professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, and lives in Washington, DC.
