Ernst Meister’s “Wallless Space”
Wave Books, 2014
What happens when a “piteously naked” philosopher-turned-poet decides to pursue philosophy in the form of verse? In contrast to the poets, the philosophers look incredibly elegant. In fact, they are naked, piteously naked when one considers the meager imagery with which they have to make do most of the time. Durs Grünbein,
What happens when a “piteously naked” philosopher-turned-poet decides to pursue philosophy in the form of verse? This is the task of Ernst Meister in
Wallless Space, a jarring book of poems in which Meister explores death, decay, and existence in an austere poetic vacuum. Through the book’s three sections featuring a total of fifty-seven untitled poems, each no longer than fifteen short lines Meister probes the philosophy of Heidegger and, to a lesser extent, Hegel and Nietszche.