Is there a simple way of speaking that isn’t simpleminded? Speech that leaves zealousness and anger behind without becoming too comfortable? Speech that constitutes calm asides to the information and personal opinion all around, that finds words to express vital matters? In Uwe Kolbe’s new poems, a rambler brings nature and the sky into his song. As in his successful Psalmen, it is feathered companions, in particular, who abound: crows and their racket, the blackbird with her plaintive song, and the buzzard flying high above. Literary convention combines with awareness of the fragile balance of the planet. Fragile, too, is the everyday life of me and you. When Uwe Kolbe’s poems approach this everyday world they take a dramatic turn, and his verses have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
‘For many years now, one of the most important poets writing in German today.’ - Hubert Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
