Elke Erb

The Up and Down of Feet Elke Erb

Poetry. Translated from the German by Rosmarie Waldrop. MOUNTAINS IN BERLIN, a selection from Erb's early poems (Burning Deck Press, 1995), showed her eye fixed on the molecule of life in the German Democratic Republic. Yet her close observation leaped off the page into the unadapted and unpredictable, and her complex syntax confounded ideological simplicities.

Since then, her poems have more and more focused on process. They document the movement of thought, Erb's incessant critical attention and reflection, her testing of possibilities, of genre borders. One of her books bears the subtitle: Poems and Other Journal Entries.

Her curiosity about the world and its possibilities is as sharp-eyed as ever, but now includes an almost obsessive interest in the adventure of language. Her pleasure in words is infectious.