Post by shayepoet on Jul 19, 2008 2:26:16 GMT 2
On the Altar of Greece
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
". . .With her eyes, strong mind and solidly classical style of picturing in new terms this historical place turned myth turned 'real' again, the journey of our time at this altar offers us a striking, immense set of views of a world we thought we knew, and still, wonderfully, do know in much richer ways by the end."
—Don Berger
Sample Poem:
First Night in Athens
Beneath the trellis, we eat
fried fish and potatoes.
Every bite is salty. The salt
sticks to my tongue. The salt
purifies my mind. My tongue is sticking
out in gesture, in plea.
It cannot retreat. I douse it with city water
but it does not budge. I have no
words to say until every Greek letter
begins to fall on my tongue. As I swallow,
the letters rearrange. When I open my mouth,
some words I do not immediately recognize
stumble out. And then slowly,
as the wine aged in oak barrels
slides down my gullet,
I feel my tongue,
I taste the red mullet
and the octopus. I taste the sea
and the earth. I eat
the words.
Originally published[/i][/blockquote]
in The Massachusetts Review
(special issue: Food Matters).
Advance praise and commentary:
"The poetry of Donna J. Gelagotis Lee combines the sharp resourcefulness of the observer with the powers of the visionary. Her poems travel both in time and in memory to Greek villages and to Athens, bringing with them the spiky sensibility of a contemporary American woman. Never surrendering her complicated view of this complex world, she writes with vigor and a rapt, focused insight into the culture that spreads itself before her. . . ."
—Molly Peacock, author of Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems
". . . Like the hands she describes preparing food, Lee stirs up a rich linguistic concoction. . . . She knows that to empathize distinguishes the gifted poet from the merely good one, and enacts her compassion through the concreteness of her writing. With that physicality, she brings to life the numinous core of language."
—Dean Kostos, author of Last Supper of the Senses
"Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s On the Altar of Greece actually does place its reader before, or on, an elevated place where the ceremony of everyday sublime life in Greece plays out. . . . Ms. Lee shows us a new, vivid, freshly layered world inside an ancient and long-known one. . . ."
—Don Berger, judge of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award, Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, and author of Quality Hill and The Cream-Filled Muse
"impossible to set aside"
—Best New Writing: The Eric Hoffer Award
Reviews for On the Altar of Greece:
". . . Early in her volume of poems she sets up expectation that she will become an explorer of the interior world of Greek women. . . . She fulfills on the expectation and, most importantly, at the same time relates her own interior journey. . . ."
—Eloise Bruce, Journal of New Jersey Poets, 2008
"a masterful poet, assembling language with ease and grace"
—Carla Atherton, Cahoots, 2008
"an outstanding poet"
—Simmons B. Buntin, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, 2007
"If you can’t make it to the Greek islands this summer, you can read this book of poetry instead."
—gette, aka Georgette Nicolaides, Blogcritics, 2007
"An evocative and memorable tribute."
—Susan Bethany, Reviewer's Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review, 2007
About the author:
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee lived in Greece for many years. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary and scholarly journals, including The Bitter Oleander, CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, The Midwest Quarterly, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Please visit her website: www.donnajgelagotislee.com.
ISBN: 1-928589-36-7; 13: 978-1-928589-36-5, 107 pages, $15.00
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Gival Press, www.givalpress.com/
Amazon: tinyurl.com/5cwqrc
Barnes & Noble: tinyurl.com/5uqusr
Also available through Better World Books, Booktopia, Gival Press, Powell’s Books, and various independent bookstores. Visit www.donnajgelagotislee.com for a list of bookstores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.[/font]