SOURCE: Glenn, Jerry. Review of Allerlei-Rauh: Eine Chronik, by Sarah Kirsch. World Literature Today 63, no. 1 (winter 1989): 97-8.

In the following review, Glenn discusses Kirsch's shifting, fanciful poetic style in Allerlei-Rauh.

The spectrum of the dozens of recent German Dichtung-und-Wahrheit memoirs is broad indeed, ranging from largely documentary chronicles to fanciful collages in which factual reports are difficult to identify with any degree of certainty. In terms of content, Sarah Kirsch's Allerlei-Rauh probably falls somewhere in the middle. Its style, however, definitely crowds the fanciful extreme. The motto is programmatic: “Alles ist frei / erfunden und jeder Name / wurde verwechselt.” How many different meanings could be found for these nine words? The first word of the text is no less significant: bunt. The narration is “colorful” and “varied,” but—another subtlety—by no means “gaudy.” The first ten words playfully form a dactylic hexameter (is Hermann or Dorothea lurking over...