News at Eleven: These early poems of [W.G.] Sebald's

also contain the concerns that would later be seen as distinctively his. Trains feature prominently, as do borders, journeys, landscape, memories, and solitude. There is a debt to Hans Magnus Enzensberger, in the reportorial interrogation of vanished things, that would remain true of all of Sebald's work. But what is most notable is how clotted the poems are with references, untranslated fragments from different languages, and classical allusions (Horace and Virgil seem to be particular favorites); the assemblage, unlike in his later work, can seem hectic.

from The New Yorker: W.G. Sebald's Poetry of the Disregarded

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