Peter Härtling was a children’s book author, novelist, essayist and playwright. He also wrote great poems throughout his career as a writer – his literary work began and ended with them. “An den Ufern meiner Stadt” brings together Härtling’s late lyrical works for the first time.
At the age of 17, Härtling published his first book of poems, which included the later oft-quoted line “ein Narr wie ich” (“a fool like me”). This fool also shows up in his late poems, those of his old age. Familiar motifs, images and moods from his extremely rich and varied oeuvre reappear in these late texts, which are sometimes somber, sometimes warm and bright, but always impressive in their linguistic precision and incisiveness. For Härtling, his poems were a literary diary he kept ceaselessly throughout his life. This comprehensive volume brings together all the poems he wrote from the turn of the millennium until his death in July 2017, including numerous previously unpublished texts that were only discovered posthumously.
