Márton Koppány’s “Poem – for Karl Young (and Laszlo Kornhauser)”
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Artist’s Statement
Born in 1953, I’m a writer and editor living in Budapest, Hungary. I started writing something that turned out to be “visual poetry” thirty years ago because by the late seventies I’d understood that if I didn’t want to give up the faint hope of communicating, I should “get rid” of my mother tongue. So the main source of my way is a deficiency, which makes things simple in some sense.
My inclinations have always directed me towards the (actual, ever-changing) limits of verbal communication. But I don’t distrust/need/enjoy words more (or less) than the empty spaces between them, the sheet of paper they are written on, the rhythm of the turning of the pages, unknown and forgotten symbols, fragments, natural formations like clouds—each of them and any combination of them may be an invitation. When I feel easy and ready to make something, I experiences their complete equivalence.
Comment on this poem in particular from Visiotextual Selectricity, 2008, an anthology containing Koppány’s poem: “My intention was to write in light on the dusty canvas of sky a word which is illuminated by the small four quotation “lamps” — but also hidden by their unusual arrangement. It is about the paradoxical nature of evocation. The other dedicatee, in parentheses, is my late father who Hungarized his name before I was born. I was tinkering (again) with the Cordelia-motive (an old fixation). First came “‘aside’, but it was too descriptive; then “‘ash’, with my own family’s idea, but it was too direct; finally I found “‘dust’, which brought in my mind a close friend and his stance in poetry.”
