Matthias Geske: “The forests got me out” – Chef’s Knife, Rhododendron Hedges, Bike Tour

The poems say once in this volume, they can be slapped on the cheek with an open hand. Or they press on the chest trying to breathe in the poet. The rib can break in the process. However, in a best-case scenario, it may be possible to hear “music and seagulls” and swim out to sea in your thoughts.

“Revive” and “Revive” – this is what happens to Matthias Geschke when writing (and reading) a good poem. It is no coincidence that he is looking for those moments that seem the most remote: in the sobriety of everyday life.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a visit to the pool, a newly purchased chef’s knife, or just a rhododendron fence in front of the house that needs cutting – here Jeschke begins with his language. He conveys details into a mixture of ideas, images of dreams, and sometimes cheerful and sometimes ironic perceptions. In his travels, he touches on the paradoxes of love as well as the burdens of the pandemic period.

The verses are never like a slap in the face. Also, Jeschke does not go so far in his poems for children, acting as a true “letter checker”. But he plays with dirty formulas like “roll over,” “tinker,” or “cheat” and likes to make his sentences intentionally embarrassing. In this way, he avoids the danger of becoming a poet, especially on his travels to the countryside, allowing his speaker to become the once-mentioned “leader of the group of the hour.”

However, there are always remnants of a utopia to discover here, which are molded by the title poem. A kind of experience of loneliness and freedom reminiscent of childhood impressions: “My eyes cast light in the dark / I found a way, I learned to walk on it / Putting one foot in front of the other. / I went, through, out, into the open.”

However, it is precisely this openness that is missing in some poems. Jeschke has a distinct flair for narrative, which also includes the use of many adjectives and filler words. Some poems look like a collection of prose sentences arranged on a line. Other verses tend to have opinionated phrases and perforated lines or show sensibilities, also one or the other of masculine imagination.

Painter and fellow poet Peter Schlack used ink to draw abstract shapes among the poems, which remained highly focused. One could have wished for some such art of brevity for some of the poems as well.

On the other hand, those verses in which Matthias Geske presents a special kind of comedy are definitely worth reading. For example, when he goes on a bike ride with the Pope in a dream: “I’ve always had fears / That his hood would fly in the wind / Or that the white cassock might get stuck in / The oil chain.”

Even when he works with the shape of the list and lets the different speech situations conflict, Jeschke is exactly the same. At such points one feels a bit of longing for another life, “a life that is not/linear, not logical”, but it follows a sound and an image – and perhaps the poem can unfold.