ABSTRACT
A tantalizing profundity characterizes the sparse verses of Hans W. Cohn (1916-2004), a remarkable, too-little-known German poet who escaped to England from the Nazi-infested Central Europe of the 1930s. No professional poet but rather, first, a bookseller, then a psychotherapist, Cohn produced a tiny, yet thoroughly essential lifework. His first book, Gedichte (Fortune Press, 1950), contains only seventeen poems. A second, but different, Gedichte was brought out in 1964 by Sigbert Mohn. A few subsequent pieces were published in reviews and anthologies during the following decade, including in Michael Hamburger’s classic German Poetry 1910-1975 (1977). Yet by Cohn’s own admission, he stopped writing poetry at that point. The forty-one poems of Mit allen fünf Sinnen (Edition Memoria, 1994), composed at least twenty years before their publication and now limpidly translated in With All Five Senses (Menard Press) by the poet’s brother, represent Cohn’s third and final gathering.
