Modulations

Nearly sixty years ago, Charles Olson warned, “The poet cannot afford to traffick in any other sign than his ‘one’,” preparing the way whether he knew it or not for MÁRTON KOPPÁNY to take leave of his native Hungarian and to move into English, where for more than two decades he has been creating traffic signs with the gleeful abandon of a deranged city planner with an advanced degree in Dada. Or maybe not so deranged. I read the poems in _modulations_ as perfectly sensible, whether fish are emitting thought bubbles in the sky, or a table’s legs are deconstructed to show their essentially asemic nature. Language is our great connecting principle and Koppány’s language artfully breaks, reduces, and repairs poetry with a metaphysician’s discomfort matched with a physician’s healing touch. —Peter O'Leary