An adventure with a roving genius of literary criticism Michael Hofmann-poet, translator, and intellectual vagabond-has established himself as one of the keenest critics of contemporary literature. Safely nestled between the covers of Where Have You Been?, he offers a hand to guide us and an encouraging whisper in our ear, leading us on a trip through what to read, how to think, and why to like. And while these essays bear sharp insights that will help us revisit writers with a fresh eye, they are also a story of love between a reader and his treasured books. In the thirty essays collected here, Hofmann brings his signature wit and sustained critical mastery to a poetic, penetrating, and candid discussion of the writers and artists of the last hundred years. Here are the indispensable poets without which contemporary poetry would be unimaginable-Elizabeth Bishop, "the poets' poets' poet," the "ghostly skill" of Robert Lowell, and the man he calls the greatest English poet since Shakespeare, Ted Hughes. But he also illumines the despair of John Berryman and the antics of poetry's bogeyman, Frederick Seidel. In essays on art that are themselves works of art, Hofmann's agile and brilliant mind explores a panoply of subjects from the mastery of translation to the best day job for a poet. What these diverse gems share are the critic's insatiable curiosity and great charm. Where Have You Been? is an unmissable journey with literature's most irresistible flaneur.

Michael Hofmann is an acclaimed poet, translator, and critic. He has published six books of poetry and has translated more than sixty books from the German, including Gottfried Benn's Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose, as well as works by Ernst Jünger, Franz Kafka, and Joseph Roth. His criticism appears regularly in the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and Poetry. He currently teaches poetry and translation at the University of Florida.

Part 1

Bishop/Lowell Correspondence
Robert Frost and Edward Thomas
Weldon Kees
John Berryman
Ian Hamilton
James Schuyler
Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Lowell
Frederick Seidel
Ted Hughes
"Remembering Teheran"
Heaney's Haiku
Basil Bunting
W. S. Graham
Zbigniew Herbert
Adam Zagajewski
Les Murray
Australian Poets
Karen Solie

Part Two

"Sharp Biscuit": Some Thoughts on Translating
Gottfried Benn
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Max Beckmann
The Passenger
Kurt Schwitters
Arthur Schnitzler
Thomas Bernhard
Günter Grass
Stefan Zweig Robert Walser