Michael Basse

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Michael Basse, born April 14, 1957 in Bad Salzuflen, Germany, is an author.

Michael Basse

He has published novels, poems, essays and audiobooks, and has translated poetry from English, French and Bulgarian, including works by John F. Deane, Blaga Dimitrova and Ljubomir Nikolov.

Biography

Michael Basse grew up in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg, due to the fact that his parents often moved. He graduated from the Evangelical Seminary Maulbronn/Blaubeuren in 1976. From 1977 to 1979, Basse volunteered at the newspaper Schwäbische Zeitung. Next he moved to Stuttgart to work at the radio station SDR. In the winter of 1982, Basse began studying law at Regensburg, and in 1984 he moved to Munich and switched to studying philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he completed his Master's degree in 1990. In 1984, Basse was one of the co-founders of the Munich Literature Office and was a member of the board for four years. In the nineties and the early years of the new millennium, when certain authors came to the Poetry Cabinet Munich to speak, Basse was responsible for introducing them. These authors included Anise Koltz and Jean Portante, Eva Hesse and Mary de Rachewiltz, daughter of Ezra Pound who edited and published some of his works. From 1993 to 2015, Basse worked full-time as a freelancer in the cultural critique department of the Bayerischer Rundfunk. From 1994 to 1999, he regularly wrote literary critiques for the arts section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Since 2015, Michael has been a freelance writer.

Literary Works

Basse's first independent publication, the poetry collection Und morgens gibt es noch Nachricht (1992, 1994/2), was still strongly influenced by his mentor at the time Johannes Poethen and his hermetic lyricism. The collection is made up of non-rhyming but rhythmic poems in which Basse was guided to a large extent by Poethen's poetology as he had set it out in his widely acclaimed essay Im Labor der Träume in Hans Bender's anthology Mein Gedicht ist mein Messer (1955). Basse's second poetry collection Die Landnahme findet nicht statt (1997) was lauded as "a reading adventure that whisks you off to various fantasy worlds" on the one hand, and on the other, as "prose poetry without periods or commas" for its formal stylistic stringency. Later, Basse looked for his own way of expressing himself and, through prose poetry, came up with a form he called lyrical protocols—metered texts or measures of speech which link various levels of discourse and reality. "No contemplative, feel-good poetry for daydreaming and easing you off to sleep; no dull ride along the ICE track; rather, you're hurtled wide awake onto the launchpad," the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted. In his fifth and so far final poetry collection skype connected (2010), Basse returned to shorter poetic forms, which however—like his lyrical protocols—stick closely to everyday spoken language. At the heart of this collection of love poems is, according to the internet portal Fixpoetry, "the mature love of two people (...) who, from time to time, question everything one could possibly question." Die Berliner Literaturkritik stated, "These days, the masculine-feminine 'we' is no longer generally binding. What is exciting, is (…), how a traditional, partnership-centered 'we' appears all the more clearly here as a counterbalance. The author has managed beautifully to breathe new life into this masculine-feminine 'we' in a credible way with young, enlightened accents."

In 2010, Basse's first novel Karriere was published, in which he took a critical look at the leftists of the eighties and nineties. In it, according to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, the four protagonists' pasts in former left-wing circles are probed. "By now they're aged between forty and fifty and living in the year 1999 (...). Yet now, just before the beginning of the new millennium, the world is far from their old ideals." In the end, they have all "joined the new economy of the nineties as best they can."

In 2016, his second novel Amerikanische Zone was published, which used an officer's family in the Swabian provinces to discuss the problematic German-American relationship, an—as the Stuttgarter Zeitung put it—"authentic and historically very accurate depiction of the atmosphere of the time during the years from 1944 through to 2003". Upon reading the novel, author Sten Nadolny concluded, "The book... challenges the reader—demanding books always do—, but it rewards them with a reliable evaluation of the era of North American hegemony which seems to be losing power today. Is that good or bad? Michael Basse doesn't lose himself in ex cathedra judgements, he simply provides an accurate portrayal in which we recognize ourselves, whether we like it or not."

Bibliography (Selected Works)

Basse's poems have been translated into several languages, including English, Hungarian and Dutch.

Novels

• Amerikanische Zone, Neopubli, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7418-3205-5 Search this book on .—an English translation is in production and will appear under the title Yank Zone
• Karriere, Verlag Ralf Liebe, Weilerswist 2010, ISBN 978-3-941037-58-8 Search this book on .

Poetry

• Skype Connected, a selection of love poems, Verlag Ralf Liebe, Weilerswist 2010, ISBN 978-3-941037-43-4 Search this book on .
• Prachtmenschen, new poems, Verlag Ralf Liebe, Weilerswist 2008, ISBN 978-3-935221-98-6 Search this book on .
• Geisterbegegnung. Cavalcanti und/oder Ezra Pound, long poems, 2006, Sinn und Form, issue 3/2006, p.346
• Partisanengefühle, lyrical protocols, Verlag P. Kirchheim, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-87410-098-4 Search this book on .
• Die Landnahme findet nicht statt, poems and prose poems, Corvinus Presse, Berlin 1997, ISBN 978-3-910172-53-1 Search this book on .
• Und morgens gibt es noch Nachricht, poems, Toni Pongratz, Hauzenberg 1992 (2nd edition 1994), ISBN 3-923313-75-6 Search this book on .

Audiobooks

• Brave new world prosodisch, Literary-musical performance, composer: Volker Heyn, cello: Friedrich Gauwerky, electric guitar: Frieder von Ammon, production: Michael Basse, co-production: Poetry Cabinet Munich, published by Klanglogo, Munich, Zürich 2007
• Eva Hesse: Lyrik Importe, production: Michael Basse, r’Audio (Verlag P. Kirchheim) Munich 2005
• Partisanengefühle, CD-audio of the book by the same name, Verlag P. Kirchheim Munich 2004

Translations

• Über den Torfozean, poems by John F. Deane, Akzente, Munich 6/2003
• Das Risiko ist die Abweichung, poems by Blaga Dimitrova, Neue Sirene, Munich 2/1994
• Poems by Lyubomir Nikolov·in Das Buch der Ränder – Lyrik. Anthology. Edited by Karl-Markus Gauß und Ludwig Hartinger, Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1995, ISBN 3-85129-128-X Search this book on .
• Nur ein Steinwurf vom Diesseits das Jenseits, poems by Lyubomir Nikolov, Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 1993, ISBN 978-3-7017-0795-9 Search this book on .
• Unter lauter Helden, poems by Boiko Lambovski. Akzente, Munich 4/1990

Essays (Selected)

• Ein einziges lyrisches Missverständnis. Borchardt, Adorno und die neue deutsche Befindlichkeit. In: Rudolf Borchardt Text und Kritik special edition Munich 2007, edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Gerhard Schuster
• Die kleinen Orgasmen der Poesie, Eva Hesse and the Literary Police, in: Wespennest 138, Vienna 2005
• Auschwitz als Welterfahrung. The Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, in: Merkur, issue 602, June 1999
• Island ist die Welt. About Halldór Laxness, in: Wespennest 112, Vienna 1998
• Ich sitze auf Ruinen und skizziere. Bosnia's literature of unspoken words. In: Wespennest 103, Vienna 1996
• Von Erben und Editoren. Ingeborg Bachmann's Estate, a History of Editing, in: Wespennest 102, Vienna 1996
• Die wiedervereinigte Literatur. Images of Germany five years after reunification, radio essay for the Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich 1995
• Für wenn ich tot bin… Images of Germany in the works of Uwe Johnson, radio essay für the Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich 1994
• Der lange Weg des Johannes Poethen. In: Sirene, Zeitschrift für Literatur Volume 2, Munich 1988
• Wohnen im Wort. About the search for home in contemporary poetry, in: Widerspruch, Munich Journal of Philosophy, issue 14, 1987

Editing

• Literaturwerkstätten und Literaturbüros in der Bundesrepublik: ein Handbuch der Literaturförderung und der literarischen Einrichtungen der Bundesländer. Michael Basse; Eckard Pfeifer, Hempel Verlag, Lebach 1988, ISBN 3-925192-25-5
• Milchstraßenatlas. Anthology, P. Kirchheim Verlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-87410-019-7

Links

• Literature by Michael Basse in the catalogue of the German National Library
• Michael Basse's homepage
• A short biography and review of Michael Basse's works on poetenladen
• Michael Basse on the Bavarian Literature Portal (a project of the Bavarian State Library)
• Michael Basse on the Poetry Cabinet Munich's webpage
• Michael Basse in Wespennest – Zeitschrift für brauchbare Texte, Vienna.

References

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