The Hölderliniae by Nathaniel Tarn

Is there a moment when youth suddenly turns to old age? A clear point where sanity ends and madness begins? These are some of the questions the indefatigable nonagenarian poet Nathaniel Tarn asks in his Hölderliniae, a jarring work where possession becomes a form of translation. Few poets have had such tragic lives as Friedrich Hölderlin, and Tarn embodies the German poet’s voice, allowing “H” to sing through him, to sing as him, all while intoning H’s unfulfilled glories and desires, his unwritten and alternate histories, the leap never taken from the heights of the tower (now the Hölderlinturm) over the Neckar where Hölderlin spent the last thirty-six years of his life. “Life has a thousand cards to play. Death only one.” —Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Nathaniel Tarn. The Hölderliniae: A Poem. New York: New Directions, 2021.