This landmark collection of essays by one of the world's greatest living authors makes Durs Grünbein's wide-ranging and multifaceted prose available in English for the first time, and is a welcome complement to Ashes for Breakfast, his first book-length collection of poetry in English.Covering two decades, The Bars of Atlantis unfurls the entire breadth and depth of Grünbein's essayistic genius. Memoiristic and autobiographical pieces that introduce Grünbein, the man and the author, and tell the story of the making of a poet and thinker toward the end of a century marked by global political strife, unprecedented human suffering, long decades of totalitarian rule, and, in its final quarter, the dawn of a new, post-Cold War world order; essays that focus on Grünbein's major philosophical and aesthetic concerns, such as the intersection of art and science, literature and biology; extended reflections on the existential, cultural, political, and ethical import of the poet's craft in the contemporary world; and, finally, explorations of the meaning of classical antiquity for the present-all contribute to making.

IBrief Report to an AcademyVolcano and PoemBreaking the BodyChildhood in the DioramaThree MiniaturesIIThe Age of Deep-Sea FishDarwin's EyesIIIMy Babylonish BrainTo Lord Chandos: A Fax from the FutureQ as in QuotationOn the Question of StyleThe Poem and Its SecretWhy Live Without WritingAccented TimeThe Bars of AtlantisIVMadonna and VenusOne Sunday of LifeThe Vanished SquareVA Little Blue GirlThe Thinker's VoiceThe Stroke of ApolloVIIn the Name of ExtremesA Tear for PetroniusBrother JuvenalBetween Antiquity and XAcknowledgments