Who was the boy
lying on his back in the sand,
trying to direct
the traffic in that
wash-blue sky?

Herr Grass, oh I miss you. You have been the walking embodiment of literature all my life and now you have gone. Not too soon and not without shuffling the deck before bidding adieu. The wit of these poems, irked perhaps, asks to what effect? The verse is showered with wonderful illustrations. Grass finding infinite curiosity in the design of a feather or a weathered nail. The poems appropriately roost on the declining fortune of his teeth. Is there a more fitting anecdote than Grass was at the dentist when officials came to his house to inform him he'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature?

Grass creates a tension between this waiting to die business and the insatiable need to create. Many of the poems trawl across insomnia and note the available space for another few lines. There is a fascinating interlude where Grass describes how he and his wife design boxes (coffins) for their final resting. A local carpenter builds them and the happy couple give such a test run. Shortly thereafter the boxes are stolen only to mysteriously return the following spring without explanation.

The volume begins with a political awareness, smirks at the recession response of blaming entitlements and immigrants. Grass titles a poem Mutti and waxes on Angela Merkel and her coalition. What would he make of the current shitstorm on Pennsylvania Avenue?

There are slight nods to his many marriages, his missteps. The privations of the postwar milieu are yielded in miniature. His concern towards the volume's end appears to be the curious solidity of the postmortem, he has gathered some dried frog bodies and he appears to submerge into the detail, likewise a pair of mouse skeletons in the returned coffins. These musings are both calm and inquire. ( )

Translated from German. Author previously awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Book consists of drawings, poems, recollections, and asides, all planned by Grass as his final publication. Might be most appropriate for a fan of the author. Written with one eye on the inevitable end, posthumous to the core. Wonderful sketches, but the writing was brief & disjointed. ( )

Of All That Ends by Günter Grass is a highly recommended final collection of short pieces and drawings.

This collection is Grass's swan song, his final musings on growing old, writing, and the end of his life. This doesn't mean that the collection is melancholy or depressing throughout; his prose and poetry can really be quite touching, honest, and matter-of-fact. Several of the pieces are simply his observations of everyday things. His original black and white drawings are closely tied into the prose and make his thoughts, stories, and poems even more poignant and, sometimes, whimsical or nostalgic.

Here are two of the shorter pieces

IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN
where Money lives,
Fear has moved in.
Thanks to tenant-protection laws they can’t throw her out,
nor her children, who are noisily playing Black Friday outside the stock exchange.

SO THEY CAN CONVERSE
The soft pencil suggests
that beside the bare elk skull
- a dusty birthday present -
I lay my dentures
to make a five-line poem.

CONTENTS: Free as a Bird; On Each New Leaf; Sepia au Naturel; In an Endless Line; Swoon; Evening Prayer; Abundance; Snail Mail; My Own Sounds; Soliloquy; With Staying Power; I Lack the Strength; On the Inner Life; Which Came First; Farewell to What Teeth Remain; Over the Abyss; The Last One; Self-Portrait; Standing Singly and in Fairy Rings; Complaints of a Traveler Grown Sedentary; Innards; Once; On Payments; in Frankfurt am Main; Everyday Events; Property; What Bird Was Brooding Here?; Letters; Libuše My Love; Where His Humor Fled; In the Rollwenzelei Inn; A Late-Night Visit; After Endless Torment; And Then Came Xaver; According to the Weather Report; Still Life; A Lingering Aftertaste; Roasted Almonds; When My Sense of Taste and Smell Deserted Me; Farewell to the Flesh; Stacked Lumber; Xenophobia; How and Where We Will Be Laid to Rest; To Pass the Time; That’s by Me?; Farewell to Franz Witte; Light at the End of the Tunnel; Mutti; Homesickness; When, as Required by Law; These Are Facts; Before It’s Too Late; Covered Losses; A Winter Too Mild; The Owl’s Stare; About Clouds; Rising to Heavenly Heights; On Writing; Grandpa’s Beloved; Yours and Mine; When the Monster’s Eyes Turn Green; Fear of Loss; Gone Gone Gone; In the Greenhouse; March Again; Unteachable; The End; My Boulder; What the Beachcomber Finds; Last Hope; Now; So They Can Converse; Nail and Rope; Suggestion for a Souvenir; Twisting a Rope; Painting Portraits; Stared Right Through Me; On the First Sunday; On the Back Pew; Superstition; He Called Three Times; Dear Schnurre; Stolen Goods; Found Objects; In What’s Left of the Altstadt; Dances of Death; Stared Right Through; Tracing Tracks; Hunting Season; Open Season; Summing Things Up; Balancing the Books; August; In This Summer Filled with Hate; Herr Kurbjuhn’s Question; Of All That Ends.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher/author. ( )