Heinrich Detering`s poems examine both the metropolis and remote landscapes. With lightness and an exquisite sense of form, they are balanced between romantic longing and playful wit.
»His poems are as fascinating as his essays«, wrote Helmuth Nürnberger about Heinrich Detering`s volume »Schwebstoffe« (Airborne Particles). The new poems examine both the metropolis and far-away landscapes; laconic and curious, they take measure of the world between Berlin and Boston and the Borgo Pass in the Carpathian Mountains, where dogs are beginning to return to the forests as wolves. They follow an airship in Oxford on a journey through time and allow Dutschke, Duce and Dubček to meet up in a single verse, they see Chuck Berry playing the blues and go after the dying pirates on Treasure Island, braving unknown territory. With a sense of form and an incredible lightness, these poems hover somewhere between everyday things and metaphysics, between romantic longing and playful wit.
Poems that urge us to listen. They belong to heaven and earth, effortlessly entering the realms of the metaphysical from time to time. Many thanks!
Jan Wagner, Frankfurter Rundschau
The Author
Heinrich Detering, born in 1959, lecturer of German literature at the University of Göttingen. He was awarded the Hoffmann and Campe »Critics` Prize« in 2003 and the Leibniz Prize in 2009. He is a writer of literary studies and literary essays, as well as a translator.
