Rose Ausländer’s Writing during the Period of Americam Emigration

Abstract

The article deals with the collection of English poetry by German-Jewish poet Rose Ausländer “The Forbidden Tree”, written between 1947 and 1956 during these exile years in New York. Among literature researches there are several versions about the reasons for the shift of language by the author, these versions are post-war trauma, loss of her mother or practical approach in positioning of her poetry in a new language environment. English poetry by Rose Ausländer is considered to be a transitional link between traditional pre-war and free verse poems written after 1957. In this publication there are examples of stylistic influences on Rose Ausländer’s writing by M. Moore, E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, W. Stevens and other American Modernist poets. Generally speaking, in her English poetry Ausländer gradually loses rhyme, the rhythm becomes free, the author experiments with poetic forms a lot, until she decides for the free verse poetry and continues to write quite so in German. Like E. E. Cummings, Pose Ausländer tries different forms and usage of punctuation; like Marianne Moore, she addresses meditative poems with high attention to details. We can observe direct correspondence in dedication of some poems to the American modernist poets. Poetry written by Rose Ausländer during this period, was published in 1995 Helmut Braun in a collection entitled “The Forbidden Tree”. There are 190 poems in this poetry collection, placed in the alphabetical order.