The Art of Topiary

“The Art of Topiary is a poetry collection of indescribable wonder… . The contrast between the openness of Wagner’s words and the tight adherence to form only makes each more beautiful. David Keplinger’s care in translating these from the original German never demands to be felt, and yet is inescapable. The Art of Topiary will stick with you long after its poems have been thoroughly devoured.”

“David Keplinger’s translation of Jan Wagner’s The Art of Topiary seems to rise out of a love of language that’s almost mathematical in music and pace. Thus, each line is well made, composed of lyrical density and movement, and the reader experiences this—not as conceit, but as actual. Each poem feels alive with intention, teaching us how to listen to its music. Here control becomes part of meaning. The mechanics of nature—where the organic becomes metaphysical, or the natural sculpted—are primary to the collection. This masterful accretive affect works in The Art of Topiary. Wagner’s vision has been exacted with care and know-how as Keplinger carries into translation the truth of a gesture, and this is where poetry resides.”

“To say that Jan Wagner is the best German poet of his generation would be true—but what does it mean? Perhaps we should first ask: what does it mean to be a poet, in our time of migrations, violence, hybrid wars? Where does one find a moment in which ‘melodies unheard’ still startle us? His Art of Topiary isn’t the practice of mere formal clippings of the natural world according to our own most current notion of beauty—but finding the ageless intensity of tenderness within each thing he sees. In our most violent of centuries: here is the poet who is willing to stop, and stand still, in the intense brief moment of being, and see the largesse in the smallest of astonishments.”