HLIBCHUK, Geoffrey. Variations on Holderlin. Montreal: Snare Books, 2008. First Edition. Trade paperback. 202x127mm. 66pp. New.

Variations on Hölderlin is informed by a particular etymology of the verb to "translate": to move the dead from one place to another. The corpse in question here belongs to Friedrich Hölderlin, the schizophrenic Romantic poet subsequently canonized by such figures as Nietzsche and Heidegger. But whereas these theorists all too often arrest his corpus in order to conduct their critical autopsies, the Variations resurrect Hölderlin to the modern day, where his schizophrenic obsessions with the gods are now updated through contemporary celestial phenomena: astronauts, radio transmissions and satellites provide a new context above, while the underground churns with the sounds of subways and cloud chambers. The Variations remind us that poetry is, above all, an ongoing conversation between the dead and the living.