Fish Magic: Selected Poems

by Elisabeth Borchers, Anneliese Wagner

`Fish Magic' introduces the fascinating and individual West German poet Elisabeth Borchers, whose poetry has attracted critical acclaim since its first appearance in 1961. Her poems have the elusive and haunting quality of magic charms. As in the art of Paul Klee, whose painting gives this book its title, there is a deceptively childlike surface masking a tragic awareness of the human condition. Echoes of fairy tales, folk song and nursery rhymes mingle with nightmarish moments in these sharp, compelling and original poems.

Genres: Poetry

108 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1986

About the author

Borchers was born in Homberg in 1926 and lived during World War II in Alsace. She wrote fiction and poetry and plays. She also wrote for children and translated from French.

Her novel Gedichte (Poems) won the Roswitha von Gandersheim Medal in 1976, an award made to outstanding women writers in German. She worked for publishers until 1998 where she helped the eventual nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska.

Borchers died in Frankfurt am Main in 2013

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Progress

Every day
the world shrinks
to the size of one cornfield

Many sleep
in half a bed

In the courtyard the dogs
tear their master
to pieces

[Mo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deceptively simple.