The Palm Beach Effect: Reflections on Michael Hofmann - Softcover

an appropriately unorthodox celebration of Michael Hofmann (born 1957, in Freiburg), the influential poet, translator and critic whose literary output spans thirty-two years ...
Simon Pomery, Times Literary Supplement

The editors of this varied, informative, sometimes eccentric symposium aimed to avoid the tedium of predestrian scholarship , and they have succeeded, preferring what Hofmann, in his own collection of essays, called the swift, provisional, personal response ... The first full-length study of Michael Hofmann, The Palm Beach Effect is already indispensable.
John Constable, The Use of English

Admirers of Michael Hofmann will enjoy this collection of essays, anecdotes and poems from the elegantly various CB editions not quite a Festschrift, writes Julian Stannard, because the poet isn t done yet .... The Palm Beach Effect features some impressive verse contributions and also student accounts When you see Michael, no matter where or why, you get the real Michael ... James Buchan and Shaun Whiteside discuss his translations, and we end with Hofmann on Hofmann , Lawrence Joseph s selection from his critical prose.
Vidyan Ravinthiran, PN Review

He is contemporary poetry s most flitting and elusive ghost, the white whale of our lost alternative to all that is provincial and small in a tawdry world, our impossible strong enchanter
David Wheatley

MH was a league ahead of the rest of us; while we were writing solemn young poems, he was writing a poem entitled Solemn Young Poem
Stephen Romer

Sitting in a high-backed conference-room chair, he has the look of someone who s just hopped off a bike --Curtis D Costa

Contributors include Andrew Motion, Robin Robertson and Christopher Reid.

Michael Hofmann has been an iconic figure for his generation. His poetry continues to be a defining influence on younger writers; his translations (of Joseph Roth, Wolfgang Koeppen, Herta Müller and many others) have enlarged our world.

The Palm Beach Effect reaffirms Hofmann s central place in contemporary literature. The contributions include essays on particular aspects of Hofmann s work, poems, memories of 1980s literary London and reports from some of Hofmann s former students at the University of Florida. Notable throughout, as well as respect for the work, is an affection for the man himself. The book includes a bibliography and a frontispiece portrait of Michael Hofmann by Arturo Di Stefano.