Anon   Carmina Burana (Penguin). A wonderful collection of (originally) dog-Latin songs and poems from thirteenth-century Bavaria. In spite of their monastic origin, the texts are often bawdy and erotic. Many were used by Carl Orff in his choral showpiece named after the manuscript.

 

Bertolt Brecht   Poems (Eyre Methuen/Time Warner). Brecht's poems have worn far better than his plays. They sound even more inspired when heard in the musical settings provided by Kurt Weill and the more ideologically inspired Paul Dessau and Hans Eisler. Many recordings are available of these - the best are by Lotte Lenya (CBS), Ute Lempe (Decca) and, in English, Robyn Archer (EMI).

Leonard Forster (ed.)   The Penguin Book of German Verse (Penguin). Best of the anthologies, representing all the big names (and many more) from the eighth century to the present day, with folk songs, ballads and chorales added for good measure.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe   Selected Poems (John Calder/Princeton UP), Selected Verse (Penguin), Epigrams and Poems (Anvil). Varied anthologies drawn from Goethe's prodigious output. Roman Elegies and The Diary (Libris) couples two of Goethe's most accessible poetic works.

Heinrich Heine   Complete Poems (OUP/Gordon Press), Selected Verse (Penguin). Heine's works, with their strong rhythms and dramatic, acerbic thrusts, translate far better into English than those of any of his contemporaries; he was also the favourite poet of the great Romantic composers.

Friedrich Hölderlin   Selected Verse (Anvil). Hölderlin's poetry, with its classical metres and vivid imagery, is notoriously difficult to translate, but this anthology makes a successful stab at the thankless task. Another selection (Chicago UP) also includes some of the very different lyric poetry of Eduard Mörike.

Novalis (Georg Philipp von Hardenberg) Hymns to the Night (Enitharmon). Fine new translation of the great mystic masterpiece of German Romanticism, accompanied by an illuminating essay.