Threadsuns (Green Integer)

A Bilingual Edition

Born in Czernowitz―the capital of the Bukovina (now part of the Ukraine and Rumania)―in 1920, Paul Celan is now recognized as one of the great poets of the 20th century. Threadsuns, originally published as Fadensonnen in 1968, two years before Celan’s suicide by drowning, continues Green Integer’s commitment to publish the last great works of Celan as translated by the noted poet and critic Pierre Joris.

One of Paul Celan’s most important books of poems, Threadsuns follows the Green Integer press publication of Breathturn, which received international critical acclaim. Consisting of 105 poems, arranged in five cycles, Threadsuns was composed between September 1965 and June 1967. If Breathturn was the opening gambit of Celan’s “turn,” the entry into the late work, then Threadsuns―the volume that may have received the least amount of commentary and analysis to date―may be said to be not only an extension or continuation of the previous volume, but the full-blown realization of Celan’s late work.

Poet, translator and essayist Pierre Joris is the author of Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999, and A Nomad Poetics (essays) and co-editor (with Jerome Rothenberg) of the award-winning Poems for the Millennium anthologies. Translations include books by Maurice Blanchot, Tristan Tzara, Rilke, Edmond Jabès, Habib Tengour and Abdelwahab Meddeb, among others. He teaches poetry and poetics at SUNY-Albany. During fall of 2003 he was Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.