Lars Reyer
False Cathedrals
poetry, new
When the past, the present, and the future merge, it takes but a deep breath to be transported from the potato harvest »in Saxony on fields in fall« to a post-apocalyptic landscape in which »small herds of people« graze in a valley and crows »proclaim the carrion.«
In his new volume of poetry, Lars Reyer takes us on a journey along the boundaries of time and place. Into Saxony’s dark history and present, where, in the Ore Mountains, the »maternity dens are still wide open«, and the urban fallows begin to glow from internal tension. To the wet meadows and small towns of Münsterland, in the tracks of the forgotten poet and pharmacist Erich Jansen. Reyer’s poems oscillate between narrative impulses and bone-dry abstraction. Karl Marx drops in, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey makes an appearance, and the American Emo band Elliott sets the rhythm for all of it. In this way, a highly textured work emerges, replete with allusions and references, leaving readers to wonder what mythological spaces are next revealed to them in some grey backyard. Following Magical Machines, Lars Reyer has once again made places compellingly tangible and portrays different generations in the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous.
Reviews
»Lars Reyer’s poems depict an ‘I’ roaming landscapes in which it finds no refuge.«
Michael Braun / Volltext
»Lars Reyer’s most impressive poems are able to evoke whole scenes in our mind. By choosing and arranging words in a highly elaborated way, the poet creates very complex aesthetic constructs, which exceed the level of content to a level of open meaning. Reyer develops a magic voice, which invites to trust his enchanting perception and follow him into the world of subtle lyrics.«
www.fixpoetry.com
»(Lars Reyer) writes original, concise, and conclusive, magically intense, melodic and picturesque poetry. In his work, irony and self-mockery counteract pathos.«
GWK Literature Award, the jury
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