Matevž Kos – FRAGMENTS ON THE WHOLENESS – ATTEMPTS WITH SLOVENIAN POETRY

A book by Dr Metevž Kos titled Fragments on the Wholeness: Attempts with Slovenian Poetry comprises seven essays dedicated to (post)modern Slovenian poetry of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. The first two are contemplations on the initiators of modernism in poetry, i.e. members of the historical Slovenian avantgarde – Srečko Kosovel (1904-1926) and Anton Podbevšek (1898-1981). In the third essay the author contemplates about the opus of Veno Taufer (1933), one of the most prominent Slovenian modernist poets in the post-war era. The next essay is devoted to the collection of poems called Sonets (1989) by Milan Jesih (1950) who is renowned as a paradigmatic example of post-modernism in Slovenian poetry. The book was called after an essay about poetry by Milan Dekleva (1946). Dekleva, along with Milan Jesih, is one of the most important contemporary Slovenian poets, while both are considered representatives of the second “modernist generation” that witnessed “the crisis of modernism”. In the essay Dekleva’s opus is settled in the context of rebellious student generation of ’68, Heidegger’s post-metaphysical philosophy and eastern-oriented system of thinking – all of that left trace on Dekleva’s poetry. The essay How do we Speak When We Dare to Speak? is dedicated to the poetry by Uroš Zupan (1963), the most respectable Slovenian poet of middle generation. The last text in the book The Last Crossroad to Parnas is a synthetic rendering of the “young Slovenian poetry” from the period 1990-2005.