Pierre Chappuis is a poet of nature. Through his extraordinary skill and the uniqueness of his poetic rhetoric, he expresses nature so sensitively that it seems as if nature itself has taken the word to articulate its desolation and splendor, its cruelty and gentleness, its persistence and transformation. For Chappuis, nature does not have an idyllic, dramatic, or exotic character; it mostly appears in overtly unremarkable forms with fields and forests, waters and hills, rocks and paths—a self-contained, largely undamaged world that, however, occasionally reveals threatening elements through suddenly gaping abysses or the distant noise of civilization—highways, railways, factories. "In Hörweite/A portée de la voix" gathers all the themes, motifs, and techniques that the author addresses.