Apparently German is a particularly difficult language to translate into English, and is an aspect that is noted in the reviews for Ashes for Breakfast. The translation was provided by German born poet, Michael Hofmann, and I think The Independent has the most enlightening comments, and which also shed some light on Grünbein's views on poetry:

"Translator" seems like a dirty word here, given that "poetry in translation" is, according to Robert Frost, an oxymoron - the former being precisely what gets lost in the latter. In fact, it makes more sense to think of this book as a collaboration than a translation. In his foreword, Hofmann points out that he sees Grünbein as an equal, not a master: his work is "not the product of steel rulers and midnight oil", but "poems that want to be poems". Hofmann cheekily extends his artistic licence: Grünbein's self-defining lyrical sequence "Porträt des jungen Künstlers als Grenzhund", becomes "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Border Dog (not Collie)". The collie is nowhere to be found in the German - not that Hofmann would care.

There's much to commend this recklessness - in fact, one is left wishing that Hofmann had taken his approach a step further. Grünbein loves to jump from one register to another - one moment he is the street poet of Berlin, the next he comes over all marble and ancient philosophy. In English, Grünbein in public-intellectual-mode is as much of a mouthful as in the German - but the more colloquial passages never quite seem to get off their teutonic stilts. At times, Hofmann's phrases ring with the triumphalism of the accomplished bilinguist rather than with their proper music. In "Robinson in the City", a "malodorous hole" in the ground yawns at the human spectator. "Stinky", I think, would have done the job just as well.

This is not to say that Ashes for Breakfast isn't an overall success. When the teeth of Hofmann's vocabulary grip into the material of Grünbein's ideas, these poems can develop an irresistible emotional pull.