An Introduction to the December 2006 Issue
This issue of the series presenting Croatian poetry on Poetry International Web focuses on the work of two contemporary Croatian poets, Sanjin Sorel and Branco Čegec. In their poetic style and their authorial approach to poetry, these poets serve as useful demonstrators of certain characteristics of poetry in Croatia today. Here, in recent years, the individual voice has received increasing amounts of attention, meaning that poets have almost completely eschewed the introduction of particular elements of communal or collective poetry as it had been conceived by literary magazines, collections and anthologies of poetry, and in the writings of the influential critics who were the arbiters of literature.
In fact, until very recently this was the fundamental method used by an author in his or her poetry, and also one of the basic ways by which a particular poetic voice could be recognised and evaluated. It appears, however, that following a series of avant-garde experiments with form and language, and a post-modernist investigation of the limits of poetic expression over the last three decades, modern Croatian poetry has now rediscovered its essential roots in individual and strongly distinctive methods of poetic expression.
