Written Silence

"Written Silence" is a manuscript of an erudite who has not lost the dimension of the heart in the intellectual whirls of language; on the contrary, his young poetic pen renews the romanticism of the Macedonian language, which we hadn't even realized had disappeared from the parameters of the linguistic function of words. The metaphorization of situations and states in which the poetic subject finds itself is unobtrusive yet powerful. In Josip Kocev's poetry, one can feel the vocation of poetry as absolutely ingrained in the poet's human nature. It seems to me that Josip Kocev himself was not even aware that he had become a poet before he started publishing books. There is nothing more genuine and spontaneous for a true artist than that inner call of existence to do what they are gifted for. In the case of Kocev, that is poetry.

Lidija Dimkovska

Josip Kocev is the long-awaited guest in our wide-open reading room. Until he appeared, we hadn't been in love for a long time, as ordinary and less ordinary readers, but also with the latest Macedonian poetry that hadn't openly desired, that hadn't suffered from love pain so loudly and... bled so red and passionately... We realized, in fact, how long we had been measuring and weighing the length, depth, width, and height of the latest Macedonian poetry without knowing the real dimensions of what was still missing in it; how far we had been from the heart – too close to the mind; too far from pure, intimate love lyrics – too close to the reflective; too far from the national top poetic achievements of the 1960s, from „Суша, свадба и селидби“ , „Невиделица“, „Рамноденица“ ,„Апотеоза на делникот“, „Дениција“ ...

Olivera Kjorveziroska