Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 76
- Language: English
- Date Published: October 2016
- ISBN: 978-1-939929-64-8
Praise
An ambitious recounting of a life well-traveled, this poem began the day it’s author was born. When the colors blue, red and yellow exploded him into the world he was offered to walk. So intent is his relationship with nature and its cycles – its calm and terrifying transformations – the reader rides with him as he creates ropes of words to hold on to. We hold on as he demands his right to play with the sea, with the moon, with the sun and with those recurring blue eyes. Are they his or do they belong to his love, his partner, his witness? Our protagonist, principal character of the life he shares with flowers and gods, constantly sees, questions, challenges, and then becomes complete. He is washed in love; the permanent force. He breathes and accepts the end – “as a cycle I shall endure, like a crop…” – but even then he will fight for a fraction of time, just a bit more, to delight in the magic of all and rest assured he has fully understood. —Yareli Arizmendi, Film Writer, Actress and Director
The first challenge these poems are faced with is to hold up to the author’s autobiographical account of his life. In all honesty I thought this charge was pretentious. But, as I sat down to read, I found that every other line was as if he were speaking about me. I then understood that this autobiography belongs to us. Panagiotis succeeds in making us feel this. The language is clean, direct, and passionate and this, ultimately, is the goal of poetry. —Sergio Arau, Film Writer and Director
Excerpt
First flight
A leaf on a tree
One of many, maybe thousands, they are all my brothers
How nice to be a leaf on a tree!
You come back every spring, regeneration freak!
And you come back from the same bough
Okay for the moment
But what a boring life
Resurrecting yourself at the same place at the same time
I guess the favorite moment of your (repeated) life is when you fall down
A free fall!
A moment you can be free
And explore the little space that becomes available to you.
I never liked paintings depicting flowers and trees
Until I saw this one with paper folds acting as leaves
Some of them were falling under the bright moon
The inconspicuous, the ever wandering, who,
Like leaves, seems to change no residence
It was like they were realizing a dream
They were not afraid of the fall
Even though
It would mean their death
Like Icarus falling out of the sky
Achieving though, momentary flight.
Author
Born in Greece, Panagiotis A. Tsonis received his primary education and graduated from the University of Patras. Tsonis continued his graduate and post-graduate studies in Japan and in the United States. Tsonis is currently Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. He has also co-translated into English the epic book-length poem Kyra Frossini by Aristotelis Valaoritis (Nostos Books, 2008). This is his first collection of poetry, strongly influenced by his life and culture in the three countries he has lived.