Cherub Dust

Christian Lehnert’s seventh volume of poetry again goes all out: from two-line moments, to sonnets, odes and tersest and onwards to extensive, multi-facetted poems, this poetry works with a tremendous diversity of form.

The poet makes multiple excursions into a »dictionary of natural phenomena.« In it the world and characteristics of snow and frost, moss and leaves reveal themselves to him. Plume moths, stag beetles, flies and falcons are shaped in words. Just as later he communes with the speech of firs and beeches. Ultimately these are poems about human fate, about mythical material and that based on historical reality.

Lehnert’s poetry dips into German mysticism. From Jacob Böhme and Angelus Silesius he adopts the ambiguous, penetrating language that connects spirituality and physics. In his poems, a resurrection of analogue thinking takes places in the much vaunted digital age.

»Lehnert’s genuine pathos and visionary worldview have become a rarity in these times of culturally critical cynicism and are therefore all the more important.« Berliner Zeitung

»Christian Lehnert makes nature’s wonders shine. His poems expand our view of life – and its inexpressible reason for being.« Der Sonntag

»The wealth of this collection speaks for itself. Worldly wisdom meets playfulness and clarity.« Landshuter Zeitung

»Who else writes so productively on spiritual reinforcement? And what’s more, linguistically speaking, this skilfully? With just two lines Christian Lehnert can bring the world to silence.« fixpoetry

»What a resonant space for silence, what a vade mecum to more precise sight and speech!« Christ in der Gegenwart