Flight and Metamorphosis

This central collection by the poet, dramatist, and Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs-newly translated from the German by Joshua Weiner (with Linda B. Parshall)-reveals the visionary poet's remarkable power of creation and transformationSo far out, in the open,cushioned in sleep.In flight from the landwith love's heavy luggage.A butterfly-zone of dreamslike an open parasolheld up against the truth.Flight and Metamorphosis marks the culmination of Nelly Sachs's development as a poet. Sachs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, speaks from her own condition as a refugee from Nazi Germany-her loneliness while living in a small Stockholm flat with her elderly mother, her exile, her alienation, her feelings of romantic bereavement, and her search for the divine. Forced onto a journey of endless change, Sachs created her own path forward. From these sublime poems, she emerges as a visionary, one who harnesses language's essential power to create and transform our world. Joshua Weiner's translations are the first in more than half a century to elucidate Sachs's enduring poetic power and relevance.