The one-eyed singer, songwriter, and knight errant Oswald von Wolkenstein (surname
literally wdquo;Cloud-Stone dquo;) was among the last of the great troubadours. A contemporary
of Villon, versed in Petrarch, and a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, Wolkenstein was lost
to history until scholarship in the 1970s recognized him as the German languagetsquo;s first
genuinely autobiographical lyric voice. In the hands of the magician-translator Richard
Sieburth, working in the spirited tradition of Ezra Pound and Paul Blackburn, Wolkenstein squo;s verse rises from the page like a medieval Bob Dylan. Facsimiles of Wolkensteinksquo;s
musical compositions are included.
