This is an introduction to Evelyn Schlag, one of the most critically acclaimed European poets, translated into English with critical and biographical material.

The first English translation of the work of Evelyn Schlag, this text includes "Summer Elegies," one of her most recent and highly acclaimed poems, along with selections from earlier works. The celebrated Austrian poet, one of the most distinctive and subtle voices in contemporary German-language writing, uses "elegy" in the same spirit as Ovid, as a mode that includes the themes of love, place, and the passing of time and the urgencies it induces. These poetic landscapes and the creatures that inhabit them, human and otherwise, are unforgettable, and the rapid, nuanced, and unpunctuated style involves the reader in various creative ways.