“Expressionistic explosions” is the evocative—and grimly ironic—phrase used by the Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature to describe the plays and poems of August Stramm, who was born 29 July 1874 and died in a cavalry charge on the Eastern Front during World War I. Yet Stramm’s “ecstatic ejaculations and outcries,” the entry author insists, “are genuine poetic phenomena in the history of literature.”

(Just read a bit of his play The Bride of the Moor, the only translation of him I can find online: https://t.co/hPUexoiVTk. It’s … different. And I’m not prepared to say any more than that.)

Stramm spent 20 years seeking a publisher for his very unusual brand of poetry and finally began appearing in print starting in 1913, two years before his death, though he has been translated and anthologized repeatedly in the years since.