MLRy 98.2, 2003 519 poetological roundedness, which often find expression in an aesthetically reduced form. The fourth section, 'Rose Auslander. Spiel- und Lebensversuche', deals par? ticularly with these matters and it is clear that writing poetry is the process by which the poet's self and her material are shaped. The author sees complementary features in these two poets* work, despite obvious differences. Both poets serve a more general purpose of remembering and reworking, and their work, arising from marginalization and exile and a kind of return home, forms a poetry caught between the need to be articulated and the nigh-impossibility of using the chosen medium of the German language. This otherness is compounded within the larger one oftheir sex. The author has obviously chosen not to give much space here to Auslander's quite considerable corpus of poetry in English and yet it too poses questions, concerning, for example, her exclusive use of English in the period 1948-56 (see e.g. the poem 'Pilate still asks'), although the explanation of this choice is complex. Writing and survival play a role here, although the author does not see this question primarily as one of therapy, yet clearly it is an important feature of both poetic ceuvres, particularly in the case of Sachs, who wrote herself into and out of periods of acute depression and paranoia. Auslander's poetry has not been subject ed to much critical scrutiny hitherto, though a change is evident from Kathrin M. Bower's Ethics and Remembrance in the Poetry ofNelly Sachs and Rose Auslander (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000); the author attributes this lack to the poetry's being out of tune with contemporary poetry and to its marked tendency to concentrate on an understanding of Auslander's own self. Her poetry illuminates her own situation without a thrust forchange: 'Die Uberfulle und scheinbare Zusammenhangslosigkeit ihrer spontanen Inspirationslyrik entzieht sich vielfach theoretisch und literaturhistorisch relevanten Diskursen' (p. xxii). Some of us might findthat this characterization rather speaks forthe poetry. One could say that her poetry provided her with a sounder kind of therapy than that which the tortured Sachs was able to draw from her own work. There is an implication in these com? parisons that Auslander's poetry is less weighty than that of Sachs, who tries to form viable structures forherself by a quasi-learned recourse to Jewish mystical traditions. The author wishes too to see her study within the company of transatlantic scholar? ship which has charted the univers concentrationnaire. Poetry's potential forexpressing the inexpressible, the elusive, for holding fast the fleeting, equip it in every sense for rediscovering and articulating a continuity afterthe unspeakable horrors of mass extermination . This study offersinterpretations of individual poems that are useful and to the point. A conclusion offers a further overview and makes connections to the writings of Paul Celan, with whom both poets had contact. This is a serious attempt to come to terms with the poetry ofthese two writers as poetry and not as a pastoral aid forliving. It is not an easy book to read because of its tendency to lean on high aesthetic jargon, but behind this is a firmdesire to explain things, which is always commendable. A bibliography, which does not contain all the references given in footnotes in the individual chapters (see e.g. the two references on p. 8 n. 23), rounds offthe book. There are no indices. The primary texts of other quoted writers are also listed under secondary literature. The use and non-use of colons before quotations was not always clear. Munich John Margetts 'Uber die Zeit schreiben' 2: Literatur- und wissenschaftlicheEssays zum Werk Ingeborg Bachmanns. Ed. by Monika Albrecht and Dirk Gottsche. Wiirzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2000. 228 pp. ?25. ISBN 3-8260-1837-0 (pbk). This volume is the second in the series 'Uber die Zeit schreiben'. Its aim is to record the current 'Wandel der Bachmann-Rezeption, der sich aus der historischen Blickver- 520 Reviews schiebungergibt'. The firstvolume of 1998 centredonthe Todesartenproject, whereas this one addresses a much broader range of texts, but has a distinctive methodological focus in that it is made up of 'diskursanalytische und kontextualisierende Beitrage...