#Phoebe Giannisi

[contremineur]

O sea of olives and noonday stone above the bright sea of goats out to the shining Aegean farther out to the horizon’s secret end.

Phoebe Giannisi, final lines to Morning hot and windless (tr. Brian Sneeden)

from here

[violettesiren]

spread out along the olive tree like a drawn bow. my back against the tree my abdomen against the sky hands uplifted feet open to winds suspended in the world while everywhere the endless drone of cicadas in chorus alone I strove away from the others for hours splitting the air with my strange and sad desire’s keen. o sea of olives and noonday stone above the bright sea of goats out to the shining Aegean farther out to the horizon’s secret end.

Morning Hot and Windless by Phoebe Giannisi (Translated by Brian Sneeden)

[traaaaash]

From the collection "Cicada" by Phoebe Giannisi

[7r0773r]

Chimera by Phoebe Giannisi, translated by Brian Sneeden

Morning Epilogue

this summer. I lived with loved ones. I walked in the forest. this summer. we didn't swim in the sea but entered it and sat for hours talking while rotating our feet just enough to float. we climbed on the horses went berry picking let time pass as it wanted without forcing: Ivan our new dog brought us here. after I'd finished L'esprit du Zen the first and last book of the summer Ivan stole it like he does tore it apart with his teeth. pages leaves bits of fragments text drifted across the yard carried off by wind. I kept trying to grab them as they were leaving. how to walk in the spirit of zen? how to move through the world coherently when all your verbs are past tense and the stars that you see went out an eternity ago. the loss—possession the past—belonging to now as memory to oblivion. the almond between your teeth is earth.

***

Transhumance II

for mom

i. words are markings on the mountains the mountains aren't spoken the words are plaited tracks the words are branches the place flashes through time time does not exist time turns back each year I ascend and descend your line time carrying nothing on my back I stitch I unravel joy through sorrow carrying each day on my back.

ii. in the beginning was the law: scraps of earth allotted how far? up to the markings each time a little farther out beyond.

iii. boats of people leave in droves young and strong their mothers in their headscarves left behind wondering "where are you now, my son?" daily and praying in the light, will they find out in the end? "where are you, my son," the goddess Thetis asks, a cuttlefish or cormorant diving into the sea like a bird in the sky "I nursed you with rosewater raised you with milk with my immortal fire I submerged you within it to be a shield for your body for when you're beyond my reach but bodies are bodies, they're tangible and I had to hold you by the ankles upside down from your tiny heels and this stamp this undying grip became your vulnerable marking, my dear the place of the mother's grip the mark of death."

iv. they called and said come over when I got there a young shepherd stood inside the pen a tall redhead in a cobalt blue uniform choosing kids for slaughter males mostly, two months old he took them one by one in his arms and while they bleated walked over cross dangling over his chest and carried them across the fence to the other side he was Christ and Calf Bearer and Charon but also he was midwife and mother he knew by heart whose child was which having guided with his hands each one's mouth to its mother's breast he showed it how and even taught the mother what to do now he shoves each one inside the black opening of the truck bed the mouth that would take them to Hades and when one manages to nudge its tiny head through the hole he stops to caress it lovingly before hitting its nose back in when the mothers return to the pen from pasture and find them gone inconsolable—he tells me—they grieve do they realize? will they remember?

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Chimera

By Phoebe Giannisi.

[missedstations]

“Paros-Piraeus: Mini-History of the World” - Phoebe Giannisi

On reliefs inside the large graves you can observe in fine detail how they caught ducks with huge nets on the Nile how they drove water to the fields with sluices how they swam in the water by kicking their feet how they ate onion bread at the table with their hands how the cook would cut vegetables into slices with his knife and fry the onions in a pan how the mothers would call out at dusk to draw their children home how giant magnolia flowers would fall suddenly slowly white on the dirt how the cicadas stubbornly kept singing even after sunset how the sea was calm at morning and restless by noon his fingers struck the keys so violently the crickets reminded us of this late summer that soon ends Translated from the Greek by Brian Sneeden

[kinkiskarma]

everybody wants above all respect and honor/for what they are for what they deserve ...

[headlightsforever]

“The prose poem always represented a strange and unfamiliar world to me, until I translated one. This poem is from a sequence of original work that emerged in the margins of my translations of the prose poetry of the wonderful Phoebe Giannisi from the Modern Greek. Translation made the form legible to me, as a place in my writing for exploring the connections between lyric and myth: writing selves in the currency of archetypes. When a myth is believable, it is because on some intuitive level it makes sense, follows a logic that connects the experiential and imagined worlds. And because every poem is a ghost story, I find myself relying on a state of being haunted by these simultaneously tangible and intuited connections expressed in image.”

Brian Sneeden from Poem-A-Day

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Transhumance --Phoebe Giannisi --translated from Greek by Brian Sneedan

i.

in the beginning was the field. plots of earth seeded from rain and the elements gnawed by footsteps the cursive of animals and people. echoed. valleys streams and across

ii.

in the beginning was the field. in order to migrate I had to gather I had to cull. the things. the things the animals the things the things.

– what do you carry with you when you leave? – my dark. my own scintilla of dark. – what do you carry when you leave? – the marks on the body. – what do you carry when you leave? – for -got -tenact -ions -for -got -tenwor -ds fragme -ntsof -theformer -life tokeep -as -tal -isman -tokeep -as -newre -dcru -cifix.

iii.

– Kiatra kraapa omlou nou kriapa. A stone breaks a man does not break.

– Still. the fragments are glass pressed deep under skin and traveling in the flesh choosing their own paths one ascends to the heart another pierces your abdomen

– What does God cast down that the earth does not swallow?

– Wound through and through. I spat it from my mouth like a bitter seed but not a single teardrop touched my cheek why I had for years now clenched my teeth.

– You cannot eat a stone mother says instead of you cannot escape your fate

– in order to leave I had to choose things. that agony lasted months. an entire winter. heavy and dark it strips layer by layer the vessels of memory. still. what hurt most was what for many years had been slipping between my fingers like air. what had been forgotten. the empty. what had not happened.

– Yet see with your mind the absent as present with certainty, Parmenides says.

[violettesiren]

Only the voice desires sweet voice thin as honey thick dribbles and spills onto the earth below Tithonus in his cage whirring cicada as the milk thistle flowers as the burning state within a state of summer detains each of us the blaring cicada spills onto the ground the voice of the one who ceaselessly desires and recites from his own cadence relentlessly dizzying like sirens drawing us imperceptibly to sleep

Whirring Cicadas by Phoebe Giannisi (Translated by Brian Sneeden)

[judgingbooksbycovers]

​Cicada

By Phoebe Giannisi.

[kinkiskarma]

the full poem

everybody wants above all respect and honor/for what they are for what they deserve ...

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

(Nostos I) --Phoebe Giannisi --translated from Greek by Brian Sneedan

for mom

– can one live with memories? – one can – can one live with memories without wishing for a recurrence? – I don’t know (I don’t know how they do it those who grieve the loss of ones they truly loved but nearly always they find a way to bear it even when it seems impossible or they couldn’t survive without the other without him but life plays other tricks time never repeats itself the body knits to the soul resists in order to forget it remembers to continue to live)

[smallpressdistribution]

JANUARY'S #SPDHANDPICKED is on JUXTAPOSITIONS: Homerica by Phoebe Giannisi trans. Brian Sneeden (World Poetry Books) offers a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis, juxtaposing classical mythology with modern experience. Brian Sneeden's translation captures the Delphic rhythms of Giannisi's oracular poems, gliding across disparate threads of time and language.

20% off all month w/ code HANDPICKED

[violettesiren]

I.

Breath of wind you blow and come on the balconies at night as we sit outside gazing at the sky flowers trellising a light whiff as the butterfly flickers its wings and standing on a flower bees suck juices make love with their mouths and feet sucking what's beneath and the shifting weather because who's to say who can categorize elsewhere in his collection elsewhere the butterflies the bees and plants elsewhere the cats the goats or the trees elsewhere the mouth elsewhere the semen elsewhere the stamen and vulvas breath of wind you who gently caress faces bodies gradually naked tossed into unshuttered night with the sky's dome above the earth wedged open and in the joining we slipped ourselves into their entwining creatures of summer sensually seeking a sweetness and taking in through the pores of our skin open passages connecting outside and inside pathways to the mind the heart memory all of us tiny transmitters and receivers in the great funnel of the universe spiraling endlessly breath of wind breeze of the sea voice whispering I say take me in your embrace in your violence and gently let me go

from Breath by Phoebe Giannisi (Translated by Brian Sneeden)

[violettesiren]

          Thetis            the one who positions herself            perhaps            always the one who posits            as we know even she            who refused to be posited            to surrender to the man            becoming            fire wind water            tree fowl tiger            becoming            lion snake cuttlefish            until one time at the Sepia peninsula the mortal            steadfastly positioned her gripping            the prey in a stronghold            and ate her during the lovemaking            only left her white bone            the bone of the cuttlefish on the shore            washed clean by the wave            Thetis is no longer there            she blows a conch from the depths            of the sea            a funnel a large seashell echoes            with the words that say            “despite all the inks I ejected            the man devoured me            I a goddess he a mortal”            the warrior always returns dead

Thetis by Phoebe Giannisi (Translated by Konstantinos Matsoukas)