Whether in
poetry, fiction, radio drama or sound installations, Esther
Dischereit's work represents a unique departure in recent European
writing: a distinctive, off-beat syntax of German-Jewish intimacy
with the fractured consciousness and deeply rutted cultural landscape
of today's Germany. Sometimes
a Single Leaf,
mirroring the development of Esther Dischereit's poetry across three
decades, includes selections from three of her books as well as a
sampling of more recent, uncollected poems. It is her first book of
poetry in English translation. In the words of her translator:
?Esther Dischereit?s poetry offers a visceral pathography of
post-war continuities, spectres, amnesia and trauma. Her work builds
on the poet?s vulnerability and witness to a previous and
ultimately un-sealable dimension ? a dimension inhabited in a
different way by the poetry of Paul Celan ? in which the violations
and degradation of the Shoah resonate with harrowing persistence in
the detail of contemporary everyday life. At the same time, however,
her poems test moments of personal and poetic redress, espousing
forms developed in an incessant exploration of speech rhythms and
images, celebrating the erotic and quotidian, experimenting with
hope, seeking community."