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Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

Room of Rumor: Tunings

Oswald Egger

Translated from the German by Michael Pisaro

A Bilingual Edition

A Villa Aurora Book

Room of Rumor: Tunings is based in part on texts Austrian poet Oswald Egger wrote while a fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. The original, Nichts, das ist: Gedichte, largely conceived during his walks in Rustic Canyon in Pacific Palisades, was published by the German publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag in 2001.

Translator and composer Michael Pisaro, collaborating with Egger, reworked the original to create a new English text laid out in parallel construction, as lineated poetry above and prose below, like figure and ground, a pointillistic canvas of words drawn from the landscape of Southern California, other American locations and a host of literary sources.

Egger was born in 1963 in Lana, Italy, and lives in Vienna and Hombroich, Germany. He is the author of several works of poetry, and has won numerous literary prizes, including the Mondsee Poetry Award, the George Saiko Award, the Brentano Award, the Lyrikpreis Meran (2002), and the Georg Büchner Prize (2024).