Book Description

Translated from the Greek by Brian Sneeden. For the first time in English--a volume of poems by one of Greece's foremost poetic voices. Phoebe Giannisi's Homerica offers a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis, re-weaving classical mythology with modern experience. Yet the mythic characters and scenes never feel otherworldly--rather, they appear alongside the tugboat, the bicycle, the television, and the helicopter. Brian Sneeden's masterful translation captures the Delphic rhythms of Giannisi's oracular poems, which rarely travel in a straight line but rather glide across multiple threads of time, like a look interweaving strands of the mythological past. "Giannisi's poetry is a wonderful combination of the classical and the underground avant-garde. Trained both in architecture and Ancient Greek, her poems tackle the problem of how to inhabit the spaces we live in--from the abandoned lot and the swimming pool to the page of the book. What a pleasure to have the full Homerica series in Brian Sneeden's lyrical translation."--Karen Van Dyck "Sneeden is a meticulous translator and a poet in his own right. He brings Phoebe Giannisi's work to life with immediacy and conviction."--Edmund Keeley "Phoebe Giannisi's poetry collection Homerica is a reinvention of Greek lyric verse and its language."--Shon Arieh-Lerer, World Literature Today "[An] unusually excellent translation." -- Anne Carson, The Paris Review Literary Nonfiction. Film. "A nuanced, clear set of poems that seamlessly articulate homeward journeys--wherever one's home may be."--Kirkus Reviews Poetry. Women's Studies. Greek Studies.