(the book consists of Hofmann's poems widely admired for t...)
the book consists of Hofmann's poems widely admired for their gift of compressed and vividly pointed reportage, and for the collision course of words and dictions that his poetry characteristically provokes
(Safely nestled between the covers of the book, he offers ...)
Safely nestled between the covers of the book, he offers a hand to guide us and an encouraging whisper in our ear, leading us on a trip through what to read, how to think, and why to like
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and literary critic. He writes poems in English and translates various texts from German reflecting a life lived in two cultures.
Background
Michael Hofmann was born on August 25, 1957, in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. He is a son of Gert Hofmann, an academic and novelist, and Eva Hofmann (maiden name Thomas). Michael’s maternal grandfather was also associated with literature – he worked on the edition of the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, a German-language encyclopedia.
Education
When Michael Hofmann was four years old, his family relocated to the United Kingdom. Michael attended schools in Bristol, Edinburgh, and Winchester.
In 1976 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge where he studied English Literature and Classics. Three years later, he did graduate work on Robert Lowell, the American poet noted for his self-referential, melancholy verse, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English with honors.
Then, he attended the University of Regensburg. From 1979 to 1983, Hofmann studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. A year later, he received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge.
The start of Michael Hofmann’s career can be counted from 1983 when he began to earn his living as a freelance writer, poet, and translator. Since then, Hofmann has had several collections of his work published, and he has also written literary criticism and translated an impressive body of fiction.
Hofmann’s verse appeared in Faber’s Poetry Introduction 5 in 1982. The following year, Hofmann’s first collection of poetry, ‘Nights in the Iron Hotel’, saw the publication. As with the Faber Introduction, the book appeared only in Britain. According to many commentators, the poet’s ease in moving across the European continent and discovering every part of it was evident.
Hofmann’s second collection of poetry, ‘Acrimony’, published in 1986 was more autobiographical than the previous work. The first half of the volume presented memories drawn from Hofmann’s university days, while the second examined the strained ties between himself and his father.
While obtaining steady work as a translator during the 1980s, the author continued to explore new lands in his poetry. With 1990’s ‘K. S. in Lakeland: New and Selected Poems’, Hofmann’s earlier work from the previous collections, appeared alongside fourteen new poems. It was also the first collection of his verse to be issued in the United States. One of its subject matters was the German Expressionist painter Kurt Schwitters, who died in exile in England’s Lake District after being condemned by the Nazis in the Degenerate Art furor in the 1930s.
In 1993, Michael Hofmann joined the professor’s staff of the University of Florida, Gainesville where he has been teaching poetry and translation workshops. The post coincided with the publication of his next poetry collection entitled ‘Corona, Corona’. The book met with mixed assessments from the critical establishment.
The following year, Hofmann became a visiting associate professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and edited along with James Lasdun an unusual book, ‘After Ovid: New Metamorphoses’. The volume offered a new twist on the first-century Roman writer’s classic of Latin literature, ‘Metamorphoses’. Hofmann and Lasdun requested translations and reworked versions of the poem’s various sections from well-known modern writers. The result was an epic from antiquity revived in the English words of forty writers such as Seamus Heaney, Craig Raine, and Ted Hughes.
Hofmann has also been the translator of numerous works of fiction. Some titles were classic German tales that had never appeared in English, such as Kurt Tucholsky’s ‘Castle Gripsholm’. Hofmann again wrote the introduction for the 1993 translation of Wolfgang Koeppen’s 1954 novel ‘Death in Rome’.
Hofmann has also translated Herta Mueller’s award-winning German novel. The ‘Land of the Green Plums’ in the 1980s. Published in English in 1996, it recounted the tale of teenagers under Romania’s oppressive Ceaucescu regime.
By 2009, Michael Hofmann had become a full-time professor at University of Florida, Gainesville. Besides, he has also served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, the New School University, Barnard College, and Columbia University.
In addition to his own writings, the author’s poetry has been included in many anthologies, including Penguin Modern Poets among others. He has contributed and continues to contribute to such periodicals as the Times Literary Supplement, London Times, New York Times, and London Review of Books. One of his recent works, ‘One Lark, One Horse’, was published in 2018.
Nowadays, Michael Hofmann spends his time between Hamburg and Gainesville, Florida.
Many of Michael Hofmann’s poetry touches political topics.
Views
Quotations:
"I believe, with Gottfried Benn, that, ‘the ability to write fascinatingly is a primary one,’ and that nothing else (‘polystrophic rhymed addresses to loved ones and aunts’) is worth shit. That what matters in writing has not been codified: it has to make you freeze or burn, or take the top of your head off, as Emily Dickinson said."
"I write about myself, but not out of solipsism. If I had somewhere to stand I would write about the world. I like a kind of humor where no one quite dares to laugh."
Membership
Michael Hofmann is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Literature).
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Michael Hofmann embodies the cosmopolitanism of cross-cultural European modernism. The constant displacements of time, space, and language have created an arresting imagination." Lawrence Joseph, poet, author, and critic
"Hofmann has an eye for history, and his poems give sharply focused glimpses of unsatisfactory lives." Hugh Haughton, academic, author, and editor
"He is a vulnerable and at times rather naive lyric poet, whose attentiveness to the workaday world does not preclude an interest in larger themes, and who on the evidence of this collection must be reckoned to have a bright future." Blake Morrison, poet and author
"It used to be that a novel would put you among people, tell you a story or stories, give you some sense of what it might be like to see a different cut-out and perspective of the world: as a schoolteacher, an adulteress, the wife of a member of Parliament, an officer, a cockroach."
1988, for the translation of Patrick Süskind's Der Kontrabaß ('The Double Bass')
1993, for the translation of Wolfgang Koeppen's 'Death in Rome'
2003, for his translation of Gert Hofmann's 'Luck'
2005, for his translation of Gerd Ledig's 'The Stalin Organ'
1988, for the translation of Patrick Süskind's Der Kontrabaß ('The Double Bass')
1993, for the translation of Wolfgang Koeppen's 'Death in Rome'
2003, for his translation of Gert Hofmann's 'Luck'
2005, for his translation of Gerd Ledig's 'The Stalin Organ'
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize,
United Kingdom
1995, for the translation of Gert Hofmann's novel 'The Film Explainer'
2003, for the translation of Peter Stephan Jungk's 'The Snowflake Constant'
1995, for the translation of Gert Hofmann's novel 'The Film Explainer'
2003, for the translation of Peter Stephan Jungk's 'The Snowflake Constant'
International Dublin Literary Award,
United States
1998, for his translation of Herta Müller's novel 'The Land of Green Plums'
1998, for his translation of Herta Müller's novel 'The Land of Green Plums'
PEN Translation Prize,
United States
1999, for his translation of Joseph Roth's 'The String of Pearls'
1999, for his translation of Joseph Roth's 'The String of Pearls'
Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize,
Germany
2000, for his translation of Joseph Roth's 'Rebellion'
2000, for his translation of Joseph Roth's 'Rebellion'
Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize,
United Kingdom
2004, for his translation of Ernst Jünger's 'Storm of Steel'
2007, for his translation of Durs Grünbein's 'Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems'
2004, for his translation of Ernst Jünger's 'Storm of Steel'
2007, for his translation of Durs Grünbein's 'Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems'