By KOSTAS KOUTSOURELIS [in an interview by SJFowler in Poetica.net] – My verse tends towards classical forms. This is my intention, an intention –I should confess– not always conscious, but, as it comes out in the end, a permanent and consistent one. In other words, concerning poetic expression, discipline is the counterbalance of the poet’s freedom. Without freedom, the speech comes out dry and stereotypical, whereas without discipline it is being split up and spread towards something meaningless and redundant.
I believe that the excessive individualism concerning the means of expression, to which we were led during the 20th century, this constant and forced hunting of innovation that Ezra Pound called “Make it new!”, all this led contemporary poetry to a dead-end. When every poet has no other goal than to create a formal language which would be only his or hers, the result can not be other than the alienation of poetry from its audience. How many different languages and personal techniques could a reader digest, no matter how welcoming and adequate he or she is? Nonetheless, poetry is not fashion; it does not need to reinvent itself every five or ten years in order to comply with the standards of consumption. Poetry is not a good to consume, poetic forms neither; we don’t really need to throw them to the waste every now and then or recycle them constantly from the very beginning. The important thing is to render them new life.
Continued at Poetica.net | More Chronicle & Notices.
