1 review for Bernd Jaeger: Hard on the Borderline

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Tim Brandt – 15.08.2020

   "Stern

   moment of shock of my conception of light

   white eye

   Sandstorms drift across the tundra

   the way is marked

   the wolf pack moves on

   Bulldozzer

   heavy earth, earthen calf

   I fervently believe in the light

   a city is now being built there

   steel towers

   we feast on the oil

   the black universe

   world battle of my eyes with yours

   Earth melts in my hand

   I bite

   the world is decided"

   Although a new publication, the poems in "Hart an der Grenz" are texts from the years 1970-1980, more precisely from the four publications by Jaeger that appeared during this period.

   The idiosyncratic formlessness of many of the poems, which almost always fit on one page, is immediately apparent. If they don't have a title, they usually start with a lowercase word and, in addition, often seem to begin well before that, sometimes seeming like a fragment or a quote from a longer poem.

   "if we stay longer

   the picture of ours

   cottage at

   have neck in

   amulet

   let's leave pandora with us

   reside

   under the pitched roof

   two duck kicks from the schorn

   stone we hit

   but you outside

   two couches

   sit up"

   This fragmentary nature also gives the impression that Jaeger sometimes indulges in his very own mythology in his verses. Sometimes the poems have something fairy tale-like or mysterious about them, but they almost always give the appearance of a connection that the reader believes to find, at least partly, initially in the mythological, in the allusive.

   Of course, none of this should be interpreted in such a way that Bernd Jaeger appears as an unworldly, rumored, purely spiritistic poet. Rather, his lyrical self is a very shape-shifting figure, appearing sometimes as a fine observer, sometimes as a calling instance, sometimes as an immersed biographer, sometimes as a painting dreamer, sometimes as an enigmatic prophet.

   "on the glasses one

   Archivists from the north

   countless gladiators fight each other

   scream down

   while he was in the Colosseum

   visited Rome

   glasses always fog up

   when they go from cold to

   warmth is coming”

   Otherwise, it is difficult to attribute overarching properties to the poems without marginalizing their diversity and individuality. They are capriccios that come across as inspirations, exaggerations, occasional poems, snapshots.

   This very own moodiness, the variety of moods and subjects is her capital: you never know exactly what to expect in the next poem, whether the imagery will fan out purposefully, scattered, openly or hermetically, whether it will be more in the profane, in the transcendent or somewhere in between.

   (A more extensive review was published by Signaturen-Magazin.de

   • 

     Sujet Verlag – 27.12.2020

     Many thanks dear Timo Brandt!