Thomas Tsalapatis
The beauty of our weapons
ed.. Antipodes, page 176

In most of the sections that make up the collection under discussion, Thomas Tsalapatis (1984) manages to publish mature and balanced poetry that gives the impression that he is hesitantly getting used to his completely individual style. The book consists of five separate parts with separate titles. Each of them has autonomy. The first two parts (“Incidents” and “Your Right Ways”) are less successful. My impression is strengthened by the fact that from the third part to the end, the level of the poet, as it were, rises. From now on, he does not lose the thread and purpose of a single atmosphere.

It’s not that the playful parts of the poems in the first part aren’t enjoyable to read. But in the third part (“History and No Other Way”), we see very clearly the same game tools used in the service of more ambitious goals, with impressive results. But what are these means? In this book, Tsalapatis perfects a voice that engages in an intense dialogue with society, history, and personal space without drowning out the special aspect of the subject. We can, if we wish, read him as the one and only, as an artistic whim, as a confessor. And if that suits us better, we’ll put him among the participants in the dance – but maybe then the dance would be forced to speak its own words, at least sporadically.

The section “Practice” with its inventive, dynamic verbal constructions is the best way to show that the poet leaves behind the clothed aphorisms of the second section (“Your true ways”). Anyone who can adapt haiku to arithmetic with words does not need to show us that he can also write aphorisms. “Practices” – this, it seems to me, together with the “C” of Yana Bukova, is one of the most active poetic games of our new poetry.

But Tsalapatis will win the reader’s recognition primarily with the verses of the sections “History in this way and not otherwise” and “Flags”. Actually I’m not sure if they really belong to two separate sections. In my opinion, purpose and style are the same. For example, “The Canadians Are Melting” is a beautiful poem about cultural (and political) discomfort, which in another unity complements the special nervous sadness of an informal composition consisting of the poems “Delos”, The advance of the light brigade, “Return to Delos”. The poetic ego does not get angry at History, and does so very well; anger hardly writes good poetry. Anxious, agitated, subversive, caustic, sensitive, unable to suggest anything concrete, avoiding big words. Like one who, in order to avenge the flesh that devours him, becomes flesh himself: a poet of flesh. Until now, no one has led the ghosts of ancient Delos in such a way, theatrically interiorizing the reader in a poem, with the help (with humor) of a lost, truly revolutionary keychain! And if defeat is supposed to be admitted, it gradually becomes trivial. He pauses: “I prefer the poem about Delos. Shall we go there? / Again? We just read it two pages back./ Yes, but I forgot my key chain there./ That’s no reason to go back to the poem./ It was my favorite key chain. As if I hear the voice of Savvopoulos in “Acharnis”: “The musician wants only work.” A win-win recipe.