Modernistischer Barde

…Manger, who was, as the editor and translator point out, a „modernist folk bard.“ His work is suffused with influences from European literature; he retells stories from the Bible, setting them in the contemporary world. He wrote verse that chills with its sense of ominous consequence for lost innocence:

An infected wind weeps in our garden;
Before our house, a scarlet lantern glows;
Death’s silver razors play, like fiddle bows,
White music on the throats of pious calves.
/ NYT *) 9.11.02