"This study locates for the first time the hidden thread that runs through Krolow's work: his uneasy relationship to the recent German past. During the entire postwar period, he engaged his technical virtuosity as a poet in a stunning avoidance of historical content, both Germany's and his own.

He never addressed publicly his own activities in the Third Reich and during the war: this study examines for the first time, with new historical research and documentation, Krolow's activities during the Nazi period and his literary production before 1945. With this new foundation, Neil H.

Donahue presents Krolow's career from a wholly new perspective, presenting in sum, but overturning, decades of Krolow criticism that, begun on a false footing, missed the real historical depth in Krolow's poems: the depth of avoidance."--BOOK JACKET.