Celan's poetry [in Speech-Grille and Selected Poems] reminds me of that of the English poet Christopher Middleton. The words in it tend to stand away from each other and be little poems in themselves. The images are startling and in perfect focus, yet the whole poem is like something one has never seen before, a machine dreamed up by Kafka, or a painting by Ernst or Klee….

Here is the beginning of a poem by Celan:

                 Lichtgewinn, messbar, aus
                 Distelähnlichem:
                 einiges
                 Rot, im Gespräch
                 mit einigem Gelb.

Mr. Neugroschel [Celan's translator] records the English equivalents of these strange words:

                 Light-gain, gaugeable, from
                 something thistle-like:
                 some
                 red, conversing
                 with some yellow.

A riddle? It turns out that the poet is looking at the rubble in a vacant lot beside train tracks, and the rest of the poem discloses what we encounter often in Celan. He is writing...