Ahistoryofclouds 99 Meditations

POETRY TEXTS ANTHOLOGIES. In these ninetynine meditations poet and novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger celebrates the tenacity of the normal and routine in everyday life where the survival of the objects we use without thinking a pair of scissors perhaps is both a small human victory and a quiet reminder of our own ephemeral nature. He sets his quotidian reflections against a broad historic and political backdrop the cold war and its accompanying atomic threat the German student revolt wouldbe socialism in Cuba China and Africa and World War II as experienced by the youthful poet. Enzensbergers poems are conversational skeptical and serene they culminate in the extended set of observations that gives the collection its title. Clouds alien and yet symbols of human life are for Enzensberger at once a central metaphor of the Western poetic tradition and the most fleeting of all masterpieces. Cloud archaeology writes Enzensberger is a science for angels.