• Even Now
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Archipelago Books

Even Now

Even Now

by Hugo Claus, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer

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Beautifully translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, Hugo Claus’s poems are remarkable for their dexterity, intensity of feeling, and acute intelligence. From the richly associative and referential “Oostakker Poems” to the emotional and erotic outpouring of the “mad dog stanzas” in “Morning, You,” from his interpretations of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a modern adaptation of a Sanskrit masterpiece, this volume reveals the breadth and depth of Claus’s stunning output. Perhaps Belgium’s leading figure of postwar Dutch literature, Claus has long been associated with the avant-garde: these poems challenge conventional bourgeois mores, religious bigotry, and authoritarianism with visceral passion.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781935744887
Pages: 220
Publication Date:

Praise

Claus rages against the decay of the physical self while desire remains untamed. From the beginning, his poetry has been marked by an uncommon mix of intelligence and passion, given expression in a medium over which he has such light-fingered control that art becomes invisible.
—J. M. Coetzee

Nobody could write so rampantly about the wild veracity of sensual love for women and life than Hugo Claus. To read him is to be shot into verbal ecstasy. Fortunately these translations do justice to so much of this.
—Antjie Krog

Astonishing book. Half an hour into reading it I already feel that I have known this poet all my life—and I’d never heard of him before. There is a richness of feeling, exactness of imagery, tender skepticism of the body and its wants—I found myself thinking of Donne, Sterne, Cendrars, Bukowski, Celine all at once—how can he do that? Colmer’s translation is uncanny, feels as if every word is the one the poet intended, always yields a sense of Yes, here it is! Hugo Claus seems suddenly a permanent part of our poetic landscape opened at last.
—Robert Kelly

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