The Ever-Accessible Evergreen: Ernst Jandl’s Poetry from Every Conceivable Angle (Essay originally written in German as Das immer-zugängliche Immergrün: Ernst Jandls Dichtkunst aus jedem denkbaren Blickwinkel )

In the 75 years of his life, experimental poet Ernst Jandl became a successful and critically acclaimed author in both Austria and Germany. Jandl was famous for his experiments with language and convention in the form of sound poems and visual poems (known as concrete poetry), and particularly for his political poetry. For a poet who published more than thirty collections over a period of 35 years, it stands to reason that Jandl\u27s poems can be analyzed from different perspectives, so today, literary critics and analysts interpret Jandl’s poetry through a multitude of lenses. However, most who examine Jandl today only focus on a singular aspect that they can trace throughout multiple poems, rather than analyze the larger significance of these elements’ influences on one another. This Senior Scholars presentation serves as a companion to my German Departmental Honors essay, which demonstrates how Jandl was uniquely successful in his poetic style, not only because of its accessibility to a wide audience, but also because his work is accessible in a multitude of ways