Jörg Fauser: An Evening in Europe

This chapbook of translations from the late German poet Jörg Fauser (1944-87) shows the poet's American influences, especially Charles Bukowski, with whom Fauser was acquainted. But there is more to Fauser's poetry than secondhand hard luck. The character that comes through in these poems is a ranging traveler who takes life as it comes, whether he's in Berlin, New York, Paris or Brest, where he "wandered around the harbor" with "no money for a hotel."

In the midst of lonely debauchery, however, Fauser's poems display a subtlety that at time shifts direction completely with a single word. "Butcher Shop (Or: A Man Can Be Destroyed and Defeated)," describes an evening scene in a butcher shop as the narrator stands behind an old man: "threadbare winter coat/ a wart on his neck/ black ring around his shirt collar/ well-trodden low-cut shoes..." The man orders blood sausage, aspic and beer, and disappears into the night. Then comes Fauser's conclusion, as he realizes "how old/ and destroyed and defeated they are/ my fathers."

With a single letter, the "s" on "fathers," Fauser accomplishes a unique dual task: He at once universalizes the poem and personalizes it. The narrator is intimately related to the old man, as he is to all old men, pointing to a universal humanity that by extension includes the reader and everyone in the world. At the same time, the final word brings with it the shock of the avant garde, although it is deceptively simple: How strange it is to see the word "father" in plural.

Throughout the collection, Fauser's hard-bitten tone is matched by a switch-blade-sharp approach to language.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com