German poets who have responded to Bertolt Brecht's remarkable legacy as a dramatist, poet, and polemicist are collected in this anthology, published to mark the 50th anniversary of his death in 1956. These poems demonstrate how Brecht's concerns and unique diction have become the very stuff of modern poetry, while critical works tend to focus on Brecht's role in shaping modern theater. This refreshing anthology illuminates Brecht's oeuvre, creating a poetic dialogue between past, present, and future that features such distinguished poets as Wolf Biermann, Heinrich Boll, Paul Celan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Peter Huchel as well as translators David Constantine, Ian Fairley, Michael Hamburger, and Michael Hofmann.

Karen Leeder is a fellow and tutor of German at Oxford University's New College and a publisher and translator of modern German literature, including the poetry of Bertolt Brecht, Michael Krüger, Brigitte Oleschinski, and Raoul Schrott. Her translation of Evelyn Schlag, Selected Poems won the 2005 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Translation from German.