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Alexander Peer's insightful poetry stops the clock to take a deeper look at life
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY
"You lose yourself in Peer's words and verses. Line after line, you come closer to love, to life – but also to death. And suddenly, you have read the last poem. Then Peer leaves us alone with 'gin to finish, six o'clock' – and with a well-schooled eye for the magic of every moment."
Erkan Osmanovic, Buchmagazin Literaturhaus Wien
"Alexander Peer's Gin to finish, six o'clock provides a powerful poetic vade mecum, splendidly suited for a journey to the inner self."
Harald W. Vetter, Podium Literaturzeitschrift
"One often pricks one's ears or is startled or smiles at successful, surprising formulations."
Christoph Janacs, Literatur und Kritik
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"I would wish to be the clemency between men is written here, and one would like to answer directly that this is already the case. For these poems are thoughtful, gentle, and mature; here, a poet is fully the master of his craft and utilises it to the full extent of its power and beauty. A tremendous spectrum of locales and natural phenomena, philosophical theories, emotional states, reflections on the past, present and never was lend the writings depth and complexity, and yet humour and levity always come to the surface, and of course: clemency. Doubt, ambiguity, and free association are expressly desired and are the inherent harvest of this richly relational poetry that leaves a long echo: the bonds between people – even strangers – and between poet and poetry."
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How many drinks in do we have to be to reach nirvana? Each culture has its own ecstasies to achieve a higher status of consciousness. But when the tide of euphoria goes out, what remains? Gin and wine represent two categories of intoxicant, two symbols for divergent histories and social spheres. Wine: since antiquity, the indelible topos for the mythos of unrestrained, at times even destructive celebration. Wine represents megalomania and freedom, the helpmate to the voyages that revealed the world. To wine is ascribed an elevation of truth as well as a capacity to animate to cunning.
Gin is a drink of the Anthropocene. It crosses boundaries of class: worker and king alike both drink gin. When we run out of gin before the evening has run its course, discontent makes itself felt. Sigmund Freud wrote of civilisation and discontent, and this discontent only grows in the face of the challenges today poses. The four horsemen are approaching. How better to await them than with a glass of wine and a gin and tonic?
Gin to finish, six o’clock
Poems from pp. 57, 72, 73
Alexander Peer
Gin to finish,
six o'clock
The Snuff Box
A snuff box is all it takes
forgotten on a windowsill
for the fairy tale never to end.
That the past has
something to reach out with
to us, into our
basket of the present.
All the things we have in there!
Sometimes we are too much even for ourselves,
to take any of the fruit from within.
The snuff box is
like a carrier pigeon,
a messenger from grandparents
and their broad shoulders,
of coaches and cruises,
of fireplaces and damp floors,
of chalking on a blackboard,
of tureens of soup
and over-rich sauces.
Oh,
it’s calling.
Oh my.
Before then
(Memento mori III)
Before Death comes,
let’s go to bed one more time
and make babies, prepare food,
go dancing, watch films
and argue so badly that we
understand each other.
Before Death comes, I would like
to write a couple of lines.
Will you look for me
in vain in those lines
when I won’t be anymore?
Or maybe I will be
in a quite different way?
Searching for meaning III
You’re pestered far too often,
by the same old question,
whether there is sense,
in this, in what we do.
Your age of asking why
ends with death.
Even if external meaning
evades you until the end,
the question itself,
puts you to the test,
and when you stop,
stop enduring the question,
you lose so many of those
good wishes that the years
amass.
© Alexander Peer 2021, translation Bryn Roberts 2022
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