Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose
In prize-winning translator Hofmann’s new selected volume of Benn’s work, this hugely important figure of twentieth-century German literature, curiously neglected in America, is lovingly reclaimed. Hofmann concentrates on Benn’s later poems and  his extraordinary prose. Benn (1886–1956) won Germany’s highest literary honor, the Büchner Prize, in 1951, and he was tipped for the Nobel. Benn considered his time spent in the German army during WWI and WWII, serving behind the lines as a doctor, as the best of his life: no wonder he writes, “the unexpected always happens, / the hoped for never does.” Benn is not philosophical about this state of affairs that can only be mourned. His tone is incomparable, and by means that seem almost alchemical, Hofmann has made the poems sound contemporary and idiomatic. The prose, too, is fluent, witty, and too disillusioned to be called sarcastic. A longer introduction and some explanatory notes would have been useful, but these are quibbles. This is a vital book. --Michael Autrey