Georg Trakl (1887-1914) grew up as the sixth of seven children in a well-to-do protestant family in Salzburg, where his father made a living as a hardware dealer. His mother was addicted to opium and had a disturbed relationship with her children. The upbringing of Georg and his younger sister Grete, with whom he developed an intimate relationship, was left to a young Alsatian woman. The governess, Marie Boring…
“The only solace is: to be sad. When sadness degenerates into despair, you should become grotesque. You should go on living for the hell of it. Should try – recognising that existence only consists of brutal and vile hoaxes – to find uplifting.” Speaking is Kuno Kohn, Alfred Lichtenstein’s alter ego, who featured in Lichtenstein’s poetry and prose to mock life, society, colleagues and, not in the least, the poet himself. Lichtenstein’s merciless and expressionist…
The opening lines of Ed Sanders’s poem For Ted Berrigan recall the origin of the friendship between the two poets on the Lower East Side, where Sanders had moved from Kansas City and Berrigan from Tulsa via Chicago in the early 1960s. The poem is one of two that have been printed in the joint Moloko & Sea Urchin edition In Honor of Ted Berrigan by Ed Sanders, which also contains glyphs and contact prints from Ed’s…
Albert Ehrenstein was born to Hungarian parents in Vienna in 1886. Despite his poor Jewish working-class background he was admitted to the renowned Piaristengymnasium and was able to study History, Geography and Art History at the University of Vienna. After having written his History thesis in 1910, he focused on a literary career, an ambition that had developed during his years…