John Tripoulas’ book of poems, Polytropos is given review in Kirkus Reviews.
Tripoulas combines philosophical ponderings with indelible memories. He opens with “Fish Hooks,” a contemplation of bronze fish hooks from the 4th century BCE, preserved behind glass at the Piraeus Archeological Museum in Greece. He notes that despite “centuries beneath the sea,” they’re the same shape of hooks in tackle stores today. While in Florence, Italy, the speaker of “Ekphrastic Theology” realizes that “Uffizi’s many Annunciations / often portray literate Mary / with book in hand. In “Asemic,” the speaker observes that Buddha, Christ, and Socrates never held a pen, perhaps because “Only their disciples turned to / written manifestation (manus, hand), / trying to make revelation / tangible, like grasping the wind.” Other poems have a more modern, personal tone; “Insomnia” recalls a grandfather’s cigarettes “singing the skin of his two fingers / and turning them yellow.
