In the Forest, In the Wooden House

When the Corona virus came over us one year ago, Michael Krüger, suffering from a severe case of shingles, was just starting treatment for his leukaemia. And since his immune defence was virtually non-existent and a slight cough would have knocked him down, he was forced to keep his distance to other people. Since then, he has been living in a wooden house near Lake Starnberg. From there he has been sending his poetic messages, meditations from quarantine, which were published in Süddeutsche Zeitung’s magazine over the course of several months to great acclaim.

Fifty observations of nature and »nature«, of the immediate environment of a restricted life and beyond the horizon, but also observations of interiority, of evanescence, sickness and death.

More poems from that time have been gathered in this volume, whose last poem offers some advice: »One has to take detours, many, not all / to reach the destination not too quickly. / The destination? / […] Don’t be scared now and stop, / because then all that detour would have been for nothing.«

»There is something peculiar about these poems: one settles in, becomes addicted to them ... Presumably this addictiveness is due to the apparent effortlessness with which Krüger formulates – and his ability to develop astute reflections from even the smallest incidents.« Gerrit Bartels, Der Tagesspiegel

»Krüger's poems connect two spheres that are very ephemeral in their own way and at the same time, precisely in this ephemeral way, they pose a comforting support: the birds on the one hand as the singers among the animals and the poets on the other hand as the singers among the people. Michael Krüger bows to both.« Roman Bucheli, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»With thoughtfulness and humility, respect and poetic mastery, with sadness and a love of life, humour and tragic resignation at the same time. Inevitably, the texts draw you into Michael Krüger's lyrical cosmos. There is no chance of escaping it.« Sabine Dultz, Münchner Merkur

»Krüger is a melancholic conjurer of nature. He does not sing the praise of idylls, but of beauty with all its abysses, with all the confusion and gloom that it holds.« Ulrich Rüdenauer, SWR2