Out of the dust

Poetry. Translated from the German by Marc Vincenz. "Klaus Merz shows us what remains until we become dust—and how in spite of this, we can even expose impermanence with great joy. Even while reading, we age. Seldom has one—line by line—moved closer to the inevitable as in these conciliatory yet perishable verses."—Tages-Anzeiger "Klaus Merz has a eye for the substance of things; his poems can be interpreted as lyrical snapshots... [and yet,] despite his knife-edged precise reductionism, his poems are not stark and severe, but often packed with humor and irony..."—Liveres- Bücher "A master of the precise aperçu, of distillation and insinuation: a poet who carefully weighs each and every word, color and tone. An autumn wind wafts through these poems. There is talk of departure, death and impermanence, but also, time and time again, of the beauty of an endangered world. Klaus Merz dares—without wavering, but with a tender meticulousness—to do something that has been the task of poets for millennia..."—Neue Züricher Zeitung am Sonntag "A master of the short form who... permits the phenomena to speak for themselves instead of infusing them with an external meaning. With a laconic frugality, he succeeds to enter the substance and metaphysical depth of objects and make them quite visible."—Basler Zeitung