Begun in 1942/1943 and thus at the same time as his early prose and his first plays and subsequently created in parallel with his dramatic, prose and essayistic works, Dürrenmatt's poetry for a long time was only published irregularly, appearing in newspapers and magazines, and even today his poems are known only to a few readers. For Dürrenmatt, poetry was not a medium for retreating into the ivory tower but yet another expressive means, in addition to comedy, novel, short story and essay, through which to penetrate and overcome the world, in the process drawing upon a wide range of fields including science, philosophy, literature, art, politics and dramatics.