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Reiner Kunze. ein tag auf dieser erde. Frankfurt a.M. S. Fischer. 1998. 116 pages. DM 29.80. ISBN 3-10-042017-9.
A day on this earth: its title would seem to consign Reiner Kunze's book to the general category of diary; but if so, all the poems should be read as entries for a single day, and that would give the first intelligible clue to a larger scope and purpose for the whole work. Otherwise, the short notations register as fleeting albeit precise commentaries on whatever comes along. Whereas time sets immediate and baffling barriers to circumscribe the human condition, no such limits restrict the poetic imagination, intent here to elaborate in brief on the palpable, not always comfortable intimacy of the cosmic order. Wortfuhlig (which occurs in the title of the first...