Honey protocols

Monica Rick

Monika Rinck is the new queen of modern German poetry. The highlight in her oeuvre are the Honey protocols (2012), a collection in which she diligently adopts everything extravagant in language, all double meanings and constantly searches for contradictions. Rinck's work is extraordinarily layered: she starts from misunderstandings and lets meanings buzz against each other. Her lines, as it were, fool each other, but stick together like the combs in which honey is collected. Rinck's writing thrives on intellect and at the same time on her enormous visual power. She draws scenes from a sensuous vocabulary that can move in all directions and at the same time descends into a solid and compact form. Within her poetry, romance, animism, love and popular culture are the subjects. Behind these themes lie philosophical and linguistic issues. The protocols sound like a voice giving orders. The lines of poetry themselves are the swarms of bees. Something of the zeitgeist swarms through this rich and attractive collection.