Anton G. Leitner
Since 1980, Leitner edited over 40 anthologies for major publishers in the German language, such as Artemis & Winkler [de], dtv, dtv/Hanser, Goldmann, and Reclam.
He has been instrumental in raising public awareness for the art form since the early 80s and has concentrated his efforts on fostering a broad environment for poetry that crosses cultural and intergenerational boundaries.
Since 1993, he lives and works professionally as an author, critic, editor, and publisher in Weßling (County of Starnberg), because "he prefers dealing with poems rather than sitting around at courts.
"[5] One important platform within the IJA was the Munich-based publication, Der Zettel, in which many now widely celebrated writers published their first poems and have frequently been flanked by international authors, such as Vladimir Sorokin.
[7] Currently, 16 volumes of poems stand out in Leitner's larger contribution to the art form, which also includes over 40 poetry anthologies, as well as more than 30 issues of the magazine DAS GEDICHT.
[citation needed] His poems have also been featured in magazines, newspapers, television and radio broadcasts (e.g. Brigitte, mare, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Bayerischer Rundfunk, etc.).
[9] While attempting to locate Anton G. Leitner's persona within the literary landscape of contemporary poetry in 1986, Manfred Lange wrote: "He's hard to classify, and that makes him likeable.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung said that in Leitner's work "what is happing between the words, is a conquest of new territories:" in a lingually recorded terrain, "large spaces emerge amongst the seemingly trusted and established networks.
In the weekly newspaper based in Hamburg, Die Zeit, Alexander Nitzberg wrote: "The verbal simulacrum/Blendwerk frequently only frames sentences full of serenity and poetry.
"[16] What Nitzberg, as well as, for example, Joachim Sartorius, have discovered to be characteristic of Leitner's work is a form of poetry that balances the ambiguity inherent in outward intelligibility and inward magic.
"[18] [19] Leitner sabotages conventional ways of verse construction by a systematic usage of the enjambment, whereby he attains a multiple coding of his lines with meaning.
"[24] In his review entitled "Love and social critique," Fritz Deppert has verified that observation while exploring Leitner's collection of poems "Schreite fort, Schritt.
We are confronted with poems that are reminiscent of Haikus, of Leitner's models G. Ungaretti, Giannis Ritsos, J. R. Jimenez, and of the verse of Karl Krolow, the master of zero-gravity.
The poem, CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE LITTLE WORLD (German: KLEINE WELT RUNDE), for instance, reads: 'Everything, I need / around me: you, I mean you / are the hinge but you swing / in circles with me.'
"[29] Contrary to the opinions of some of his enemies, who never tire to credit Leitner's poetry with supposed incomprehensibility, other commentators – such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung – have given quite different assessments of his work.
"[30] While earlier in his career, he was called "pessimistic," critics such as Salli Sallmann have recently honored him with the title of Jokester: "Leitner wants to unearth the madness and idiocy that surrounds us every day, but he does so playfully, without any kind of moralistic resentment or invectives.
"[34] In his preface to Der digitale Hai ist high Günter Kunert wrote, "It's rare that a poet brings together three special qualities in his personality, as in the case of Anton G. Leitner.
Bayerische Aspekte emphasizes that the usage of dialect corresponds well with the content of Leitner's poetry: "The Bavarian language flows round and smooth, interlaced by onomatopoeia and infused with anarchy.
"[37] Not only around the person of Anton G. Leitner, but particularly in the flow of his work does poetry become the center of public debate, so that Salli Sallmann commented in the RBB cultural program while discussing Leitner's poetry book, Die Wahrheit über Uncle Spam (German: The Truth about Uncle Spam): "He is somebody who restlessly fights for the public awareness of the literary genre.
"[39] It is precisely this characteristic of his poetry—it's acceptability and accessibility—which transforms Leitner's person to a crystallization point for public debates on the role of poetry within society.
In the Eichborn Verlag, his audio book was published under the title Herzenspoesie, and includes love poems from Goethe, Heine, Klabund, Wedekind, and Gernhardt.
The poets lined up in this anthology range from Friedrich Ani to Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Michael Krüger, Reiner Kunze, and many more to Ludwig Steinherr.
The very form of the anthology shapes literary history, in that it shows which texts are able to hold their position with a larger audience over a longer period of time.
