It was supposed to be the actual debut of the lyricist Rolf Dieter Brinkmann: the poetry collection "Vorstellung meiner Hände," written in 1963 but rejected by the publisher at the time. The interest was in the author's prose, not in poems that differed from everything that was considered poetry back then. "The Earth is a Coffin," "Rondo for Maleen," "The Grand Celebrations of Luis Buñuel," "The Bomb in My Head," but also "Your Beautiful Knees"—even the titles reveal it: The verses of the 23-year-old already contain the unmistakable Brinkmann sound, perhaps a bit rawer, more eloquent, personal, and expressive than the later published texts of the author. What Georg Klein wrote about Rolf Dieter Brinkmann three years ago in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" also applies to the newly discovered poems: "Almost childlike, groping descriptive passages alternate with pieces in which the ga.