Fish Magic introduces the fascinating and individual West German poet Elisabeth Borchers, whose poetry has attracted critical acclaim since its first appearance in 1961. Her poems have the elusive and haunting quality of magic charms. As in the art of Paul Klee, whose painting gives this book its title, there is a deceptively childlike surface masking a tragic awareness of the human condition. Echoes of fairy tales, folk song and nursery rhymes mingle with nightmarish moments in these sharp, compelling and original poems.