Poetry is like capris and hybrids

From an interview conducted with Katia Grubisic* for the Afterword:

What’s the most exciting thing happening in poetry these days?

Poetry is not like capri pants, or hybrid cars. What’s exciting now in poetry is the same as what always has been — the spaces between words, the truthy concision, the astonishing leaps; listening to, and articulating, what Wallace Stevens called “the cry of the occasion.”

Well … another chance to quote Stevens. And this phrase is perhaps the one most often quoted, but she got it wrong: “The poem is the cry of its occasion.”

What’s more: capris and hybrids are the cries of their occasion!

*Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator whose work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications.