Leaving: A Poem from the Time of the Virus
Description
An exceptionally current volume of poems from one of Europe’s greatest poets that dwell on the most pressing reality of our times: the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the leading living European writers, Cees Nooteboom never shies away from contemporary issues. His latest collection of poems, Leaving, begins in a garden with descriptions of Mediterranean plants, but what emerges are memories of the war—images of a distant past that have never disappeared. The poems take another turn when, unexpectedly, a mysterious virus takes control of the world and turns life upside down.
A collection that can be read as a single poem, in which desolation and beauty, past and future, nostalgia and mortality all merge to represent the most mature work of a great poet. German artist Max Neumann’s haunting images that accompany the poems work as complex visual metaphors that further underline the beauty and the gravity of the poems. Together, they make for a delicate and thoughtful read.
Praise for Leaving: A Poem from the Time of the Virus
"Nooteboom began writing the poems in this collection in a pre-coronavirus era and finished them amid 'the mysterious virus that is suddenly ruling the world'. . . .While life unravels like a virus, with no clear endpoint or destination, the poems in this collection are a reminder of poetry’s capacity to give order to chaos. . ."
— Harriet Books (Poetry Foundation)
"Though not well-known in the U.S., Nooteboom is one of the most eminent poets writing in Dutch, and at 88 has enough clout and perspective to take on the seemingly ungovernable moment of the pandemic. Foregoing the banalities of quarantine writing that quickly became clichés, Nooteboom waited, then provided a vision of the pandemic that is contiguous with the future and the past—his past—rather than a freakish aberration."
— Cleveland Review of Books
"Leaving is a striking example of translation as transformation for a new reading audience. In translation not only words and lines are enveloped in a new language, covers and paratexts are also newly framed."
— Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies
“Relying in this book more on his keen-edged etching needle than the enshrouding darkness, Nooteboom has carved us a subtle portrait of his spiritual poethood.”
— Meander (praise for the original Dutch edition)
