An uncompromising masterpiece that transforms memory and renewal into a wild world of words.

Fleurs—flowers, flower petals—a title that might suggest a gentle world of blooming fields and soft breezes. But in the hands of Friederike Mayröcker, one of the greatest German-language poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this is a book of a very different kind. It is a wild, vivid journey into a rich, elemental landscape.

If you follow Mayröcker’s path, you find not a comfortable meadow but steep, stony ground—a place where her inimitable voice rings out in all its power and purity. Unsentimental and crystal clear, Mayröcker’s writing is driven by a single purpose: to create images of remarkable vividness in a language as free, bold, and fresh as if it were newly invented.

The final installment of Mayröcker’s trilogy, following études and cahier, fleurs is a book of memory and renewal, protest and revelation—a testimony to the enduring magic of writing itself.

Friederike Mayröcker (1924–2021) was among the most influential and decorated German-language poets of the postwar period. The recipient of numerous awards, including the renowned Georg Büchner Prize, during her lifetime, she published over eighty works, including poetry, prose, radio plays, and children’s books. Donna Stonecipher is the author of five books of poetry and one of prose. She translated Ludwig Hohl’s Ascent and cotranslated Alexander Kluge’s Temple of the Scapegoat.

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