Knox Chandler

Elma Kais: Licentia Poetica

by Howard Mandel
February 26, 2023

I tried to write words freed from rhythm... Yet the song came, of itself, in the right measures, And whatever I tried to write was poetry. Ovid, Tristis IV, 24-25 More than 2000 years ago Ovid captured the essence of spontaneous improvisation in a stanza--as the collective of Elma Kais, Knox Chandler, Daigo Nakai and Klaus Kugel does on Licentia Poetica. The Roman poet, author of “Metamorphoses," describes a creative outpouring which finds--or reveals--its perfect form ...