Poem

'Cyndi Lauper', a new poem by Michael Hofmann

by Michael Hofmann •

December 2018, no. 407

Poem

'Cyndi Lauper', a new poem by Michael Hofmann

by Michael Hofmann •

December 2018, no. 407

June 22

And many happy returns of the day to Cyndi Lauper, 65,
once said to ‘dress funny’ and her voice likened to ‘rat’ (or ‘rat’s’),
singing the song ‘Money changes everything’, like a coarsened Bowie,
and to the nameless, ageless rat featherbedded in a mysteriously malfunctioning
Indian ATM machine in over a million mostly shredded rupees.

Michael Hofmann

Michael Hofmann

Michael Hofmann was born in Germany and moved to England in 1961. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, he has worked as a freelance writer, translator, and critic since 1983. His most recent poetry collection One Lark, One Horse was released in 2018. Nights in the Iron Hotel, his first book of poems, appeared in 1984. He is an influential and award-winning translator of writers such as Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and Herta Müller. In 2008 he was Poet in Residence in Queensland. Michael Hofmann's Selected Poems appeared with FSG and Faber. His Gottfried Benn translations, Impromptus, was released in 2013.