“Auswendiges Gedicht der Augen” (“Memorized poem of the eyes”) is one line from the cycle “Was im Turm begann” (“What began in the tower”) in this third volume of poetry by Joachim Sartorius. The poems move between images, which seem self-explanatory, stick and yet need to be decoded, and words, in which the meaning congeals yet which can never quite achieve the images’ self-sufficiency. The second cycle, “Alexandria,” with which the volume ends, is dedicated to the figure of Konstantin Kavafis, the poet and scholar, who didn’t publish any books during his lifetime, and his native city Alexandria. In Sartorius’s rendering of this great poet’s life and poetics there is something of the sensual abundance and happiness, scholarship and erudition, knowledge of futility and fear of death that are also defining motifs in Sartorius’s poems. Their richly allusive, polyphonic language, shot through with references and citations, moves between naming and telling, both in the smallest spaces and on a wider literary, historical and geographic scale.
