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Threadsuns

Paul Celan

Translated from the German with an Introduction by Pierre Joris

A Bilingual Edition

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Born in Czernowitz—the capital of the Bukovina (now part of the Ukraine and Rumania)—in 1920, Paul Celan is now recognized as one of the great poets of the 20th century. Threadsuns, originally published as Fadensonnen in 1968, two years before Celan's suicide by drowning, continues Green Integer's commitment to publish the last great works of Celan as translated by the noted poet and critic Pierre Joris.

One of Paul Celan's most important books of poems, Threadsuns follows the Green Integer press publication of Breathturn and Lightduress, both of which received international critical acclaim with the latter book winning the PEN New York Translation Award. Consisting of 105 poems, arranged in five cycles, Threadsuns was composed between September 1965 and June 1967. If Breathturn was the opening gambit of Celan's "turn," the entry into the late work, then Threadsuns—the volume that may have received the least amount of commentary and analysis to date—may be said to be not only an extension or continuation of the previous volume, but the full-blown realization of Celan's late work.

Poet, translator and essayist Pierre Joris is the author of Poasis: Selected Poems 1968-1999 and A Nomand Poetics (essays). With co-editor Jerome Rothenberg, Joris edited the Poems of the Millennium anthologies. He teaches poetry and poetics at SUNY-Albany.