Gunter Eich, author of the POW poem “Inventory,” one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. As an early member of “Gruppe 47″ (from which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich.