River Walk

Robert Schindel’s new poems, published after neraly ten years of lyrical silence, are also a product of old age and parting, as the author himself confesses, not without humour. It is no accident that the title implies the act of leaving. Along this »walk« readers are presented with 55 highly personal poems of magical fluency. Melancholy, occasionally seemingly tired of dying, bouncing back the next moment cheerfully, they guide us along the tracks left by poetic sensations, perceptions and insights »through all darknesses to the lights«: to the vision of love, for example, in the full splendor of its regalia as well as in its everyday attire. And time and again it is the haunting images of nature and of animals that delight and amaze the poet. He takes his readers to places where they can look down from lofty heights onto the ground of all-too-dreary realities, and manages, poem after poem, to make the invisible visible with the means of language.

»… it seems vast expanses of the emotional landscapes that Robert Schindel sketches out in River Walk – at turns rough and pulsating, but always intimate – are yet to be chartered. So let’s hope that we can look forward to further poetic expeditions along such twisting paths.« Björn Hayer, Frankfurter Rundschau