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Yale Series of Younger Poets
Beginning with O
This is a book of letting go, of wild avowals, unabashed eroticism; at the same time it is a work of integral imagination, steeped in the light of Greek myth that is part of the poet's heritage and imbued with an intuitive sense of dramatic conflicts and resolutions, high style, and musical form.
74 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 11, 2012
Okay, first of all, Olga Broumas teaches at the college I attend. I'm taking a class with her this year, and she's a fantastic little old woman, and I am incredibly biased. Incredibly. Biased.
At the same time, though, although I know she's very highly prized in "lesbian" poetry, I don't particularly like erotic poetry. It doesn't really appeal to me. Frankly, it makes me feel like I'm spying on a very private moment between people, despite that the author obviously chose to have it published and share that experience. Out of the poems in this volume, I greatly prefer the ones about womanhood in general and the ones about maternal relationships with other women. Also, I adore the ones about mythology and fairy tales. My weakness.
Seeing as Olga immigrated to America from Greece, it makes sense that she uses a lot of Greek mythology allusions in her work. I love them. I think, for the most part, they are spot on, and really add to the poetry. I love the way she interprets certain myths and fairy tales and makes them her own, uses them in relation to her own experiences. For example, "Cinderella" is fantastic, and both recounts (seemingly, it's obviously up to interpretation; this is only mine) how a woman felt when surrounded by the company of men, how oppressed she feels even when faced with "freedom" and also the way Cinderella in the fairytale was invisible to the people she worked for and heard everything. I love how in "Sleeping Beauty", she recounts her experience of being "awoken" by a "prince" in a modern-day retelling of the classic fairytale.
Another thing that's wonderful about Olga Broumas is her vocabulary. She uses words that you'd never expect to hear in poetry, like cesarean as just one example, and manages to make them flow perfectly and feel so beautiful. She uses language that is never used in everyday speech, but makes it seem very natural, not like she just looked it up in a thesaurus, which I think is extremely impressive considering English is her second language.
Personally, my favorite poems are "Maenad", for it's description of the slights and angers and strengths required of a common housewife pre-Women's Rights; "the knife and the bread" for it's violent, potent, tangible imagery and wonderful repetition of the word "knife"; and "Four Beginnings/For Kyra" because I love the way she describes the narrator's relationship with this woman in four meetings. It's short and yet it tells so much.
All in all, I adore this book, and these poems, and Olga Broumas in general. I desperately want to read more of her work. This was a fantastic book to have to read for class.
At the same time, though, although I know she's very highly prized in "lesbian" poetry, I don't particularly like erotic poetry. It doesn't really appeal to me. Frankly, it makes me feel like I'm spying on a very private moment between people, despite that the author obviously chose to have it published and share that experience. Out of the poems in this volume, I greatly prefer the ones about womanhood in general and the ones about maternal relationships with other women. Also, I adore the ones about mythology and fairy tales. My weakness.
Seeing as Olga immigrated to America from Greece, it makes sense that she uses a lot of Greek mythology allusions in her work. I love them. I think, for the most part, they are spot on, and really add to the poetry. I love the way she interprets certain myths and fairy tales and makes them her own, uses them in relation to her own experiences. For example, "Cinderella" is fantastic, and both recounts (seemingly, it's obviously up to interpretation; this is only mine) how a woman felt when surrounded by the company of men, how oppressed she feels even when faced with "freedom" and also the way Cinderella in the fairytale was invisible to the people she worked for and heard everything. I love how in "Sleeping Beauty", she recounts her experience of being "awoken" by a "prince" in a modern-day retelling of the classic fairytale.
Another thing that's wonderful about Olga Broumas is her vocabulary. She uses words that you'd never expect to hear in poetry, like cesarean as just one example, and manages to make them flow perfectly and feel so beautiful. She uses language that is never used in everyday speech, but makes it seem very natural, not like she just looked it up in a thesaurus, which I think is extremely impressive considering English is her second language.
Personally, my favorite poems are "Maenad", for it's description of the slights and angers and strengths required of a common housewife pre-Women's Rights; "the knife and the bread" for it's violent, potent, tangible imagery and wonderful repetition of the word "knife"; and "Four Beginnings/For Kyra" because I love the way she describes the narrator's relationship with this woman in four meetings. It's short and yet it tells so much.
All in all, I adore this book, and these poems, and Olga Broumas in general. I desperately want to read more of her work. This was a fantastic book to have to read for class.
June 18, 2019
Olga Broumas foi a 72a poeta a ganhar Yale Series of Young Poets e a primeira nao-anglofona que escreveu em inglês como segunda lingua. Nasceu na Grécia e assim como Safo, também escreve poemas saficos.
A primeira parte é intitulada Twelve Aspects of God, ela homeageia as deusas, semi-deusas, musas, ninfas, amazonas da Mitologia Grega: Leda and her Swan, Amazon Twins, Triple Muse, Io, Thetis, Dactyls, Circe, Maenad, Aphrodite, Calypso, Demeter e Artemis.
No poema "Demeter" ela também faz a louvaçao de Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf e Adrienne Rich.
A terceira parte, Innocence, ela reconta os contos de fadas, tais como: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestilskin, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White.
Aff, amei muito!
A primeira parte é intitulada Twelve Aspects of God, ela homeageia as deusas, semi-deusas, musas, ninfas, amazonas da Mitologia Grega: Leda and her Swan, Amazon Twins, Triple Muse, Io, Thetis, Dactyls, Circe, Maenad, Aphrodite, Calypso, Demeter e Artemis.
No poema "Demeter" ela também faz a louvaçao de Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf e Adrienne Rich.
A terceira parte, Innocence, ela reconta os contos de fadas, tais como: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestilskin, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White.
Aff, amei muito!
September 1, 2019
Recently, I was discussing poetry with my 20 yo feminist daughter and I told her about this book. Almost 40 years ago, it was assigned reading in college and it still remains one of my favorite books of poetry.
February 27, 2013
I have read these poems often and over many years.
They still sing to my soul.
They still sing to my soul.
October 16, 2022
this is without a doubt my favorite poetry collection and poems period.
January 8, 2023
Stunning. A new favorite.
June 19, 2024
this was overall so insightful and beautiful. some poems gave me shivers and most were incredible some were just okay but not an issue really. very inspiring to live with zest and joy and pleasure
December 18, 2022
"at breakfast you pour
the coffee, i hold
my tongue, what i keep from you
keeps
me from you, the ship
is fading, like sunlit frost, silver
gleams on our table, mugs shine
red as cranberries, blue as frostbite, i want
to hold
on, not back, brave
morning’s fierce tangibility -"
///
"the water is tender, green, curls
softly innocent"
///
"i go
past shallows to
sashaying algae to
prowling kelp, remote
inaccessible"
These lines I find very charming. I wish I'd liked the other poems just as much as I do these.
the coffee, i hold
my tongue, what i keep from you
keeps
me from you, the ship
is fading, like sunlit frost, silver
gleams on our table, mugs shine
red as cranberries, blue as frostbite, i want
to hold
on, not back, brave
morning’s fierce tangibility -"
///
"the water is tender, green, curls
softly innocent"
///
"i go
past shallows to
sashaying algae to
prowling kelp, remote
inaccessible"
These lines I find very charming. I wish I'd liked the other poems just as much as I do these.
August 25, 2019
This is a phenomenal read. It certainly has some of the 70s/80s poetic stylings in it, but in a way that felt like the book was aching to satisfy curiosities and introspective capacities that have become recent and modern. The voltas in this book could foment a cloud into a thunderstorm.
March 6, 2023
4.5 stars
"You have red toenails, chestnut
hair on your calves, oh let,
me love you, the fathers
are lingering in the background
nodding assent.
I dream of you
shedding calico from
slow-motion breasts, I dream
of you leaving with
skinny women, I dream you know."
"You have red toenails, chestnut
hair on your calves, oh let,
me love you, the fathers
are lingering in the background
nodding assent.
I dream of you
shedding calico from
slow-motion breasts, I dream
of you leaving with
skinny women, I dream you know."
July 26, 2023
One of my favorite books now and the best poetry I've read. Literally so good I can't say enough. As a queer person I related to the perspectives and you really get a sense of the author from her work :0)
February 17, 2024
Inspired, in turns, by Greek mythology, fairytales, and female poets of the past (Plath, Sexton, Plath, Woolf), Broumas weaved together luminescent and glistening imageries of female bodies, desires, imaginations.
December 27, 2019
she somehow made me kinda invested in retelling of fairytales? which is extremely not my cup of tea
August 4, 2022
Wow what a beautiful and tender read. She gets right to the part of you that is desperate for softness. Her words will hold that and write lyrics for them. Absolutely stunning. Highly suggest.
March 18, 2023
The first 15 poems or so offer very little, but “the knife & the bread� really saved this collection for me
March 20, 2023
Words are futile devices. This collection makes me ache in a good way.
March 21, 2023
Broumas' poems are lush and sensual and unapologetically sapphic.
May 3, 2014
Caught my eye in a used book store, and I did enjoy it, but I think they may be best suited to a reader who is new to adulthood. I am curious to read more of her more mature work. Some lovely stuff here, though. Here's the last part of the poem "Circe":
What I wear in the morning pleases
me: green shirt, skirt of wine. I am wrapped
in myself as the smell of night
wraps around my sleep when I sleep
outside. By the time
I get to the corner
bar, corner store, corner construction
site, I become divine. I turn
men into swine. Leave
them behind me whistling, grunting, wild.
---
Something about those lines makes me think of Ani DiFranco and Sylvia Plath ("I eat men like air") at the same time...
What I wear in the morning pleases
me: green shirt, skirt of wine. I am wrapped
in myself as the smell of night
wraps around my sleep when I sleep
outside. By the time
I get to the corner
bar, corner store, corner construction
site, I become divine. I turn
men into swine. Leave
them behind me whistling, grunting, wild.
---
Something about those lines makes me think of Ani DiFranco and Sylvia Plath ("I eat men like air") at the same time...
March 2, 2013
I’m not sure what a straight male has to say about a book of poems by a lesbian when so many of the poems are about sex. Go the cheap route and say that they are hot? Well, some are, but I detect an arc to the loose narrative. Broumas’s speaker (possibly herself) begins as a sexual predator, living for cheap thrills and organisms from whatever woman she can coax into bed. She ends tenderly, caring about the feelings of her last partner(s). Did she fool around and fall in love? I must read more of her work.
March 9, 2008
i hyped this up in my head since hearing a poet talk about it at a poetry reading. it was good poetry for sure, but nothing that reached out and grabbed my anything.
i think i always tend to zone out on poems as soon as "god" or some other myth allusion is mentioned.
my favorite line in the whole book
"the eyes are live animals, domiciled in our head"
i think i always tend to zone out on poems as soon as "god" or some other myth allusion is mentioned.
my favorite line in the whole book
"the eyes are live animals, domiciled in our head"
Read
July 17, 2009poetry
March 28, 2022
Well isn't that just my favorite poetry collection right there
July 22, 2024
some of the best poetry i have ever read this shit was fire
June 15, 2007
I'm a sucker for queer erotic fairy-tale/greek-myth poetic adaptations. So this book is perfect. ;)
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