If it be permitted to speak of 'love at first sound, ' then that's what I experienced in my first encounter with this poet of prose. So said Thomas Mann of the work of PeterAltenberg. A virtuoso Fin-de-Si cle Viennese innovator of what he called the telegram style of writing, Altenberg's signature short prose straddles the line between the poetic and the prosaic, fiction and observation, harsh verity and whimsical vignette. Inspired by the prose poems...