Josef Mayer-Limberg [Austria]
1911-1992
At war’s end, he returned to Vienna, his poems Einfahrt (Entry) being highly praised, but unpublished because of wartime shortages of paper. In 1956 Mayer-Limberg moved to Ottakring, a working class district of Vienna, who frequented the areas coffeehouses and cafes in the early 1960s. Like many of the Vienna Group of that period, the poet became interested in dialect poetry, begun in the 1930s by Josef Weinheber and revitalized by the Vienna Group poet H. C. Artmann.
His own poems in the dialect remained unpublished until 1973, published as fon de möada und de hausmasda; gedichda aus oddagring (About Murderers and Superintendents: Poems from Ottakring). Another collection, eilodung zu de hasmasda: neucha gedichada aus oddagrilng (Invitation to the Superintendents: New Poems from Ottakring) appeared in 1978. He was a member of the Austrian P.E.N. club.
Although he was chronologically older than the members of the Vienna Group and other experimental poets of the period, Mayer-Limberg’s work clearly identified with the younger generation, and had an influence upon their poetics.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Einfahrt (unpublished); fon de möada und de hausmasda; gedichda aus oddagring (Graz: Styria, 1973); eilodung zu de hasmasda: neucha gedichada aus oddagrilng (Graz: Styria, 1978); Lockwörter: Gedicte (Baden-Wien: G. Grasl, 1988); Ausgewählte Gedichte (Podium, 2011)
I’m nobody’s fool
I’ve been in the party
for half a century
in the days
of franz josef
I marched
On the ring
With my red flag
holding daddy’s hand
I’m nobody’s fool
I don’t know
much about marx
crime stories
are more my style
but so what
the party’s my guide
and if they tell me
to vote for a baboon
that’s what I’ll do
the party’s my guide
I’ve been in the party
half a century
I’m nobody’s fool
one file
two files
four files
thousands
and thousands
of files
in the
whole
wide
world
one civil servant
two civil servants
four civil servants
thousands
and thousands
of civil servants
in the
while
wide
world
one signature
two signatures
four signatures
thousands
and thousands
of signatures
on thousands
and thousands
of files
in the
whole
wide
world
one little
two little
four little
thousands
and thousands
of fly specks
on the
thousands
and thousands
of files
with the
thousands
and thousands
of signatures
of the
thousands
and thousands
of civil servants
in the
whole
wide
world