In July

At age seventy-five, Günter Kunert is one of the three or four best established contemporary German language poets. Born in Berlin, he was “encouraged” by the East German government to move out of East Berlin in 1979 and has since lived near Hamburg. His AGNI poems “Autumn Days,” “Herr Greedyguts,” and “In July” first appeared in So und nicht anders (This way and no other, 2002), the latest of his some twenty volumes of poetry. (updated 2004)

Gerald Chapple has translated the work of such contemporary German writers as Barbara Frischmuth, Heinrich Zimmer, and Günter Kunert. He is the editor of Shadows of the Past: Austrian Literature of the Twentieth Century (Peter Lang Publishing, 2009) as well as the translator of _Why Europe?: The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path(University of Chicago Press, 2010). (updated 7/2010)