Paulus Böhmer: Kaddish XI-XXI

Paulus Böhmer
Kaddish XI-XXI

poetry

340pp (66,500 words)

In KADDISH XI–XXI, Paulus Böhmer continues his magnum opus, a great body of poetry written over several decades, the like of which has not been seen for many years in the German language – a literary event, nothing less than a poetic inventory of the world. Böhmer’s poems are symphonic structures built using musical templates. They harbour deepest grief, always combined with defiance and tenderness.

Reviews

»Rhapsodic like the poetry of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, and deeply materialistic like the work of Baudelaire.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Full of loving detail, Böhmer’s work conjures up the world like a lavish celebration of individual things and the difference that divides them. His KADDISH is a requiem for hundreds of dead and present people and things, and yet it is written as if in a single sitting, in singular, wonderfully varied language.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung

»His oeuvre is a challenge to every aesthetic convention.«
Der Tagesspiegel

»What makes his poetry this exceptional in the German-speaking world is not world-negation and depression but its often bitter devotion to life. (...) Böhmer’s poetry is a long - obviously angry, sometimes sad - always beautifully flowing chant. (...) The pathos of his verse irritates the calmed ones. It tears up distances. Böhmer directly soaks himself into the things, beings, creatures. «
Vorfreude

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Paulus Böhmer: Kaddish I-XPaulus Böhmer: Fuchsleuchten