Some Statements about Gerhard Kofler
“An authentic poet of profound originality
and extraordinary artistic and cultural importance in this Europe of languages that we
all at the beginning of the third millennium are called to defend.”
Furio Brugnolo in “L'Italia fuori d'Italia”, Salerno editrice, Roma, 2004
“A master of languages, beyond the
languages.”
Gianni Nadiani
“A great contemporary Italian poet.”
dialoghi latini
“Poems from Sea and Earth
is a formidable book, very rich, multi-layered, of great specific weight.
A wide, mature, accomplished experience.”
Paolo Ruffilli
“Poems from Sea and Earth
is the most beautiful book of poetry published in Austria in autumn 2000.”
Johanna Lier, WOZ, Switzerland
“A unique poetic
experience.”
Luigi Reitani in “Poesia”, Milano
“Gerhard Kofler’s
poems … allow us to hear the current of time in the center of
language.”
Robert Schindel
“A poet, a mage of words. On July 2nd, 1999,
at 9:30 pm, on the big stage of the ancient bath St. Laurent, as a participant of the
International Literary Festival of Leukerbad (Switzerland), Gerhard Kofler read a handful
of poems in Italian and German. The room exploded. A star was born.”
Ricco Bilger
“Gerhard Kofler is a
human and intellectual discovery that fills me with joy and gratitude.”
Italo A. Chiusano (1926 - 1995), author and cultural
reporter for the newspaper “La Repubblica”
“So many things! So many
echos! So many backgrounds!”
Claudio Magris
“I call him the master of
the Central European haiku.”
Kristin T. Schnider, Literaturfestival Leukerbad
“Finely articulated
mirror creations. Every one of them is a pleasure to read.”
Franz Haas, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
“Gerhard Kofler …
and his poetry have long been for me part of the ‘long line of great
consolers of the soul.’”
Anna Lesnik, Die Furche
“There is gold in the
verse of the moment.”
Reinhold Reiterer on “The Clockwork Logic of
Verses”, in Kleine Zeitung, Graz
“Outstanding tandem
poetry.”
Helmuth Schönauer in FF, Bozen
“These poems win you over
with their wordplay; their alliteration makes them extremely melodic, and
they remind you of the texts of the French chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg,
whom I value highly.”
güb, Die Neue, Vorarlberg
“The world on the tip of
a pen. Sophistication and puzzles. It is contradiction that gains
linguistic space through the music of pensiveness.”
Christian Loidl, Die Presse
“His literary development
has made the South Tyrolean poet Gerhard Kofler into an ‘Italiano d’Austria’,
in a dialectic fashion, and long after Trieste’s union with Italy.”
Marie-Thérèse Kerschbaumer in “manuskripte”,
Graz
“One of the effects of
the liberating tone of this poetry is that Kofler keeps his distance from
the brooding egomania of the poets of stupefaction.”
Ursula Strohal, Tiroler Tageszeitung
“Fully grasping and
sharing the rich experience of daily life and recognizing the precise
moment in which distancing oneself from it lets loose – on that ‘other
side’ – the ‘streaming thought’: this is the key
to these ‘calendar poems’. Such tight symbiosis of absence and
presence is the medium in which Kofler's poetry unfolds as a true logos
of daily existence, of the eternal parade of things and beings in front of
the poetic eye.”
Maria Elena Blanco
“I was expecting an
Austrian and was surprised to find an Italian, in both diction and
gesture. And I know something about those gestures, since my mother came
from Italy.”
Russel Murphy (USA) at the Gerard Manley Hopkins
Festival
“I don’t know of any
poet who is such a soccer fan, or of any soccer fan who is such a poet as
Gerhard Kofler. Of course, it is important to note that he raves about
Italian and not Austrian soccer.”
Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler at the Austrian Radio (ORF)
“Just a moment! I’m
not prolific at all. If you add up all the poems that I published between
1991 and 2000, that is, ‘DI MARE E TERRA’ (Of sea and earth) and
‘TRILOGIA DEL CALENDARIO’ (The Calendar Trilogy), it averages
out to one poem every six days (I never write on the Sabbath). So between
one poem and the next there are four days left over on which I can either
wear myself out with the German rendition or prepare myself emotionally
and mentally for the next poem. Or maybe not.”
Gerhard Kofler, en passant