Be Quiet - Kuno Raeber, translated by Stuart Friebert
The poems in BE QUIET share with other good poems the capacity to penetrate and move readers, but I think they can do even more. I think Raeber's poems have the capacity to change readers. That's a strong assertion but as you read Stuart Friebert's close translations of Raeber's work you will find that the poems bear me out. Raeber's intellectual and emotional depth is underscored by an artistic intensity and the eye for pairing detail and issue that marks both the talented artist and the honest scholar. His poems, rich in metaphor and allegory, have an uncanny ability to communicate, or at least point at, what is just beyond direct description and rational knowledge.
—Deborah Bogen
ISBN 97809860445712015$16.95Poet KUNO RAEBER (1922-1992) was a student of theology, philosophy, history, literature, and mythology, who also studied for the priesthood; but he would lose his faith after a deep spiritual crisis, though the images of his religious upbringing never left him. They were instead transformed into metaphors that blend Christian imagery with a broader mystical tradition to celebrate the power of poetic creation. An early member of Gruppe 47, he spent some anxious years working past "the noise" until emerging as an original in his own right, who lived and wrote by his own lights.
STUART FRIEBERT was a prolific author and translator publishing 15 volumes of poetry, 4 prose works, and 16 books in translation by poets including Karl Krolow, Günter Eich, Sylva Fischerová, Ute von Funcke, Miroslav Holub, Giovanni Raboni, Kuno Raeber, Elisabeth Smeidel, Marin Sorescu, and Judita Vaičiūnaitė. Friebert won the Four Way Books Award for Funeral Pie in 1997, the Ohioana Book Award for Floating Heart in 2015, and an NEA Fellowship in Poetry.
