Brecht started writing poems early (and immediately vividly), wrote many of them (the complete collection contains more than 2,300 texts), and wrote until the last. His poetic legacy, as in the case of many great poets, quite accurately reproduces the immediate "life path": it is just as complex and turbulent. Therefore, a few remarks should be made from the beginning.
First, this collection should not be considered Brecht's "best" poems. After all, what is better here? What is worse? This is how to choose the best birds in a motley and noisy flock of birds that bursts from the station porch. The flock fascinates itself: by its movement, power, and – above all – its noise. In the case of Brecht's poetic work, it is vital to understand the text and context. Reading this collection, you will notice how heterogeneous (and ambiguous) the works included in it are. This is quite natural: Brecht wrote classical sonnets, zongas for singing to the guitar, and texts for the theater stage, which were supposed to fulfill their dramaturgical task, not always evident beyond the vicissitudes of the plot and the psychology of the characters. He also wrote political poetic pamphlets, appeals, and manifestos (he even rewrote the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" in hexameter, but it is not here, don't look for it). In addition, he wrote paradoxical piercing verlibres. And, of course, utterly academic rhyming ballads. He quickly resorted to stylizations and free borrowings - both genre and purely stylistic. He also admired the East, which was especially reflected in his later poems. He also could turn into poems everything that happened to his eyes, so his poems often resemble fragmentary, broken, spontaneous diary entries. But what they remind you of: often they are like that. In a word, the purpose of this collection of translations was to show - at least in strokes, contours, cursory - all this immensity of ideas, ideas and methods, the entire Brechtian enormity of searches and interests, themes and characters, favorite means and most iconic characters. Therefore, this is a collection of not so much of the "best" as of Brecht's "most diverse" poems.
(From the foreword of Serhiy Zhadan's "Poor B.B.")
In the artistic design of the book and on the cover, photos from Serhiy Zhadan's archive, as well as his drawing by Bertolt Brecht, were used.
