German Avant-Garde Writer, Poet Dies

Helmut Heissenbuettel, a respected avant-garde novelist and postwar-era poet, has died of pneumonia at age 75, his widow said Friday.

Heissenbuettel died Thursday in a hospital in this north German town, Ida Heissenbuettel said.

The writer was a leader in the post-dada style of literature known as concrete poetry, an experimental form relying on puns and other wordplay, and doesn’t adhere to rules of grammar and punctuation.

Among Heissenbuettel’s works are “Das Textbuch,” “Marlowe’s Ende,” and “Projekt Nr. 1. D’Alembert’s Ende.”