Poetry. Translation by Janine Canan. Else Lasker-Schuler's poems are small red fires of passion in a time of total darkness. At great cost, she rescued her innocence from the brutality of the Nazi age and tested the resilience of her Jewish soul. In these translations, Janine Canan renders into English both the lyrical intensity of that endeavor, and the palpable danger that made it possible -- Andrei Codrescu.