Paul Celan was born in 1920 and died shortly before his 50th birthday, in 1970.

I’m not sure what I knew or had heard of his work, before a somewhat random communication with a musician and writer very into him, recently.

wikipedia — seems pretty longish and completish, last updated about 2 weeks back.

New York Times article
“A Poet At War With His Language” 12.31/00
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/reviews/001231.31anderst.html

Poetry foundation website
longish article by Cathy Park Hong that contextualizes aspects of Paul Celan’s work with other poets who spoke multiple languages, “How Words Fail“, 2006

John Felstiner, of Stanford (who I think of in relation to one of his more obscure subjects, Elizabeth Wiltsee, which Bill Rose made into “This Dust of Words”). Felstiner, a Harvard ’58, came to Stanford in 1965, and is emeritus and pretty focused on his environmental work, said to be traveling and making presentations at high schools across the land.

This book is not in Palo Alto Library collection, although a more recent Felstiner is (and other Celan collections per se are in deep storage, whilst we sling bricks around for kicks)

Celan and Heidegger, especially by James K. Lyon at Johns Hopkins MUSE
http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780801889134?auth=0

There is a 3-minute audio clip of Paul Celan reading his most famous poem “Todesfugue” (death fugue) which I can link to .

Mark Anderson

Diamanda Galas (play at your own risk)

In Germany, Gail Holst leans in on Celan.
this is a total red herring, but the search-injuns suggested a recent New York Times blog post by Dana Jennings about a 1950 comic book “Weird Fantasy” because, if I can pretend to comprehend the way this thing thinks, it has a PAUL Kast and the word CLEAN as in “clean prose”. “Clean” and “celan” and anagrams for each other. (Whereas Celan may be a pen name, picked as a version of his actual name Ancel, or a version that once had an “H” and a “ST” which were deleted)

edit to add, two hours later: aha, it occurs to me that I may have seen at SFMOMA a set of Anselm Kiefer paintings that reference Paul Celan and may have noted “Paul Celan” in a handheld device at the time. see also

edit to add, two hours and five minutes later: i struck out on my hunch to try feldman’s books, four blocks away for either celan or felstiner on celan, which reminds me i was gonna put in a good couple hours then retire to the giants game…and somewhere I did to go back and amend “Prince Hal” to the Tigers/Indians hurler Newhouser and not Norse in Jack Hirshman’s “baseball poem”…speaking of poetry projects, which in this space also goes thru Ginsburg, Van Buskirk and supposedly someday Palo Alto’s beat Lew Welch, Al Young poet laureate, but it mostly rather pedestrian stuff, “cowboy chords” as Roland Turner (John Goodman) dismissal of Llewyn Davis in the back of that car, driven by Johnny Five, and it will be five and fifth inning by the time I get to the boob tube.it’s already 2-0 giants top of the first bottom of the second I Knew that looked funny in pittsburgh, which is a mixed blessing.