opus 8

opus 8, Lehnert’s eighth volume of poetry, is a strictly composed work. Seven times eight pairs of poems form a weave, an intertwined artistic fugue. Musical structures characterise the cycle: from rhyming sounds to the processing of motifs in interwoven contexts, following the example of baroque cantatas.

But this is not a formalistic exercise. In their expressive and reflexive musicality, Lehnert’s poems explore nature by responding to it. And go even beyond that: the poems seek an abutment against man’s total access to his environment masked as the Anthropocene. In the transition between thinking and perception, they trace the spiritual: In what seems to be »matter«, they experience revelation in plants, animals and things, in times of day and in the play of waves.

»Compared to the narratives of crisis in current poetry, [Lehnert’s] verses gracefully step out of line, wrestling for a hidden truth to which there is ultimately only one key: poetry.« Björn Hayer, Frankfurter Rundschau

»Lehnert [draws on] the two classic stylistic devices of verse metre and rhyme ... certainly a tricky undertaking, but one in which he succeeds ...« Wolfgang Matz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»His poetic expressiveness is Lehnert’s piety. His poems are chorales that celebrate life in all its manifestations. Despite the austere form, they seem simple and straightforward and are beautiful precisely because of that.« Jörg Magenau, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Lehnert's collection of poems is like an outstretched hand that one would like to grasp and then extend to others.« Irmtraud Gutschke, neues deutschland

»Christian Lehnert has put all these interconnections on paper sensitively, in rich poetic language and with natural-philosophical prudence.« Andreas Puff-Trojan, Die Presse

»Nothing distracts. Rhythm and metre create an ornamentally pulsating movement on which the ship in the loom of thought sets all sails in a stimulating, pointed manner, but above all –obeying the form of the lyrical genre – in extreme brevity and conciseness and simultaneous richness of thought.« Klaus-Martin Bresgott, Zeitzeichen

»Christian Lehnert has put all the interweaving aspects [of God and nature] onto paper in a sensitive, natural-philosophical way, in poetic language inspired by Baroque poetry.« Andreas Puff-Trojan, SWR2