Donahue, Neil H.: Voice and Void

The Poetry of Gerhard Falkner. Within the context of Adorno's philosophy of poetry, this study examines the poetic achievement of Falkner and elucidates the dialectical tensions in his poetry, between formal rigor and explosive affect, sensuous beauty and social commentary, existential mood and verbal artifice. The author employs a variety of theoretical perspectives on Falkner's work, grounded in the close analysis of individual poems, and draws comparisons to poets like Grünbein, Biemann and Papenfuß. The study demonstrates that Falkner combines the lyricism of the Romantic subject with the dislocations of Modernist poetics: Falkner's poetry recovers the Postmodern self from the contexts of its threatened erasure in the deconstructed subjectivity of poststructuralism, the mass mediations of cybernetic culture, and the global reach of postindustrial capitalism. 234 Seiten, broschiert (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte. Folge 3; Band 157/Universitätsverlag Winter 1998)