“facades Somewhere here, behind these, were written good poems”: the Protagonist of Lutz Seiler’s novel “star 111 thinks”, as he runs through the district of Prenzlauer Berg. It’s the Winter of 1990, and this Carl is busy, in the midst of historical upheaval, especially with a: to become a Poet. He tries to emulate role models, and once he is quoting for its poetic pilgrimage, a Central poem: “In the staircase of chestnut Avenue 30 PM / half past five it smelled volatile / after dead-forgotten mice.”
Jan Wiele
editor in the features section.
F. A. Z.
This poem is from Elke Erb, and Seiler’s literary homage may show that in 1938, in the Rhineland-Born in Halle on the Saale, who grew up and since 1966 as a freelance writer in the GDR, which is Active already at that time a Star was (at least among people who read poetry). The poem “Avenue of chestnut trees, inhabited” dated 1. January 1981. To met this time, Elke Erb in the Literary Salon of Ekkehard Maaß, with dissident artists, while her former husband, Adolf Endler, from which she had just been divorced, at the “Tarzan vom Prenzlauer Berg” wrote. With the later as an informant for the Stasi exposed Sascha Anderson Erb 1984 issued at Kiepenheuer & Witsch, an anthology of west-East German poetry.
a Playful, funny
in Order to linger but briefly at the three influential lines of: dead, self-forgotten mice, shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon? This also says a lot about a late period mood of the poet and of your scene? Literature, history of listening, one might think, as Lorca and Benn with the surrealism met. Erbs poems are ambiguous, and you have inspired many, including the Russian writer Olga Martynova, which was earlier translated by Elke Erb, before you even wrote in German. Erb offers the resonance spaces of the Tradition (“folk song”), and you can also be playful, funny, Dada, including, if a row auslautet: “depreciation bung bung.”
your poems are often comment in need, and this Writing is the most important trait of Elke Erbs: That it has taken Comment on, namely, equal to itself, it has become an integral part of their poetry. In the “Frankfurter Anthologie” this newspaper is evident in the poem “Arrange something” along with a comment (“questions of a seated Poet”), in the Erb in a lyrical self-talk occurs lit: “of the Sun. What this phrase is wrong. Discuss. This Verse is pure irony. With the perplexity that he created.“ The poetry poetry – most recently, once coagulated in the Band’s “poem of suspicion” (2019) – is moved by Erb from the edge to the center of today’s poetic production, and it is not exaggerating if it is said, you’ve won already, pretty much all of the relevant literature prices.