Nun wird es hell und du gehst raus

A selection of poems by Jürgen Theobaldy spanning more than fifty years. Jürgen Theobaldy is a keen observer. His poems connect the political experiences of his generation with the unacademic tone of personal experiences in a socially dynamic, increasingly pop-culture-driven, consumer-oriented environment. Sensual and concrete, close to colloquial language, they evoke a youth in proletarian Mannheim, Sundays spent on soccer fields and in cinemas, love during times of protests against war and nuclear armament, strikes, and professional bans. With his own poetic self-reflection, Theobaldy is regarded today as an important representative of the so-called New Subjectivity. In the decades that follow, he expands this approach by engaging with classical poetry from Sappho and Goethe to Heym and Trakl. Nevertheless, even in metrically structured poems, he maintains a seemingly light, effortless tone, which also opens him up to East Asian poetry and ways of life amidst rock gardens and shopping streets, asserting his poetry as a space for shareable, thus communicable experiences. Poems that reach far into the world and society - a lyrical event of everyday urgency! I would like to write a short poem, one with four or five lines, no longer, a very simple one that says everything about both of us yet reveals nothing about you and me.