THE THREAD OF CONVERSATION

The title of Krisztina Tóth’s second collection of poems is not only apt, but also characteristic of its power. Her poems are fragments, ‘threads’ from a conversation, threads that break off and can be picked up again and again, carrying the conversation forward. However, the conversation is a real dialogue. Though seemingly only monologues, sad, bitter or even grotesque private speeches, these poems are in fact always one half of a dialogue, a half which – with its omissions – outlines and embodies the answers, the questions relating to it and, the reactions of the ‘other’ party. There is little in the way of statements, messages or ‘news’ in these poems: these can only be suggested by the poems together with the imagined responses, which, precisely because of their particular structure, appear to be truly dialogical, or, if you like, hermeneutic poems (Let’s Bet; Prism; De facto; Another Sea; Film Frames; It’s Pouring; Of Early Morning Hours; Of Intangibles; The Thread of Conversation, etc.). However, this hermeneutic verse structure is a rather hidden, ‘behind-the-text’ feature of Krisztina Tóth’s poetry. On the surface, it appears simple, sometimes almost conservatively traditional: the juxtaposition of small visual elements, the succession of moods, the sequence of delicately crafted small images are found in almost every poem, whilst conveying a lot of primary emotion in these lyrical passages.