Rudi Holzapfel 1938-2005

From 1971 to 1989, Rudi lived in Germany, teaching English and Literature, especially at the Emil-Fischer-Gymnasium in Euskirchen.

Over time he turned towards more traditional verse forms to express love and pain in his personal life to illustrate human frailty and defeat, and the brutal subjection of nature by the materialistic values of modern age.

The quest for romantic love and the fight against the “committee men” turned into an awareness and appreciation of all suffering, of mankind and creation in general (see “Steel and Glass’ from “Sonnets’).

The Sonnet form, long dear to him from Shakespeare, plus the acceptance of the inevitable loss of loved ones and of ideals: these eventually tempered the fury, outrage and desperation that so often exploded form in his earlier poems.