One of the world's greatest living poets and essayists, Dresden-born Durs Grünbein has had been the recipient of many national and international awards, including the Georg Büchner Prize (Germany’s most prestigious literary recognition) (1994), the Friedrich Nietzsche Prize (2004), the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize (2005), the Berlin Literature Prize (2006), the Premio Internazionale di Poesia Pier Paolo Pasolini (2006), the Samuel Bogumil Linde Prize (2009), and the Tomas Tranströmer Prize (2012). His book "Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems" (translated by Michael Hofmann) was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize 2006. He has also been a Fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and the Villa Massimo in Rome, Italy. In 2009, he was awarded the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts as well as the Great Cross of Merit with Star by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 1988, when the then twenty-five-year-old’s first collection of poems, "Grauzone, morgens" (Gray zone, morning), appeared—a mordantly poignant poetic reckoning with life in the former East Germany—Durs Grünbein has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into dozens of languages. He holds the Chair for Poetics and Artistic Aesthetics at the School of the Arts in Düsseldorf, Germany, and lives in Berlin, Germany.
In this new collection of poems, Durs Grünbein takes us on a spiritual journey through the labyrinthine cosmos of the human soul and its manifold embodiments across the ages. In lovingly tracing the paradoxes of creatureliness—its joys and sufferings, its resilience and fragility—Grünbein reminds us of the “mortal diamond from the hands of nature” that is life.
"Descartes’ Devil" is a moving and beautifully constructed book that opens our eyes to the fantasy, humor, and imagination of Descartes. Grünbein’s thought-provoking reflections on the poetry and modernity of the philosopher — this man "chosen to set the course for all of us" — are heightened and made whole by his own playful poems, which conclude each meditation.
Winner of the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Award for Creative Non-Fiction. In a sequence of rivetingly personal essays, Europe's premier contemporary poet and essayist, Durs Grünbein, reflects on his own evolution as an artist and on the meaning and importance of poetry for life in general.