Selected Poems

Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) was a great European poet whose works have been ably translated into English by David Constantine, making some of the finest poetry ever written available to today's English speaking readerships. Holderlin's poetry is deeply religious, often referencing images of antiquity, and always directly confronts the universal human problems of the need for meaning, expression, hope in an often hostile and uncertain world. As upon seacoasts when the gods/Begin to build and the work of the waves/Ships in unstoppably wave/After wave, in splendour, and the earth/Attires itself and then comes joy/A supreme, tuneful joy, setting the work to rights./So upon the poem/When the wine-god points and promises/And with the darling of Greece,/Seaborn, veiling her looks,/The waves beach their abundance.Holderlin, Friedrich is the author of 'Selected Poems', published 1997 under ISBN 9781852243784 and ISBN 1852243783.