Eleni Sikelianos

Eleni Sikélianòs

California is the star of this book-length poem that flies through time, memory, science, history, and imagination, mirroring the topography of the Golden State's landscape and the history of its diverse cultures. Deftly alternating between grand scope and minute detail, this epic poem engages the lyric with style and urgency.

The California Poem

One of our foremost practitioners of ecopoetic exploration, Eleni Sikelianos, bends time and space in this ode to our more-than-human animal origins. From the cellular to the celestial, Your Kingdom inquisitively and energetically investigates our notion of biological kingdoms, calling us to “let the body feel all its own evolution inside.” Our limbs grew from the shoulders of salamanders. Hidden motives bind us to cuckoos and caterpillars. Our faces form biological maps while our organs trace the shapes of our animal ancestors. As she studies the wild roots of our past, present, and future, Sikelianos forms a poetic ecosystem, delighting in the complexity of our natural lineage even in the face of environmental precarity. With wonder and verve, Your Kingdom reconnects us through language to our deeply animal origins—to the cellular essence from which all life emerged.

Your Kingdom

A book-length poem that grapples with the global and the globalized, bringing personal reflection to our tumultuous world.

What I Knew

The velocity of language, the ferocity of poetry unearth our most thinking, feeling, erotic selves in this powerful debut.

Two Books

Earliest Worlds

With a seamless weave of letters, reminiscences, poems, and journal entries, Eleni Sikelianos creates a loving portrait - and an unblinking indictment - of her father, Jon: a talented musician, a high school dropout, an autodidact descendent of Greek nobility, and, for much of his life, a drug addict. An eccentric visionary, he emerges as a brilliant, irresponsible, frustrating, and ultimately tragic figure. In 2001, after three years of homelessness on the streets of Albuquerque, he died in a motel room from an overdose.

The Book of Jon

This is the tale of Melena, five times married, mother of three, burlesque dancer, and "the toughest, hardest-assed woman to ever eat wood and bite nails." Located in history and memory, her life cracks open questions of identity at the heart of an American immigrant woman's experience and becomes an argument that no existence is ever truly marginal. Eleni Sikelianos is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Loving Detail of the Living and the Dead, as well as a hybrid memoir, The Book of Jon. Sikelianos directs the creative writing program at the University of Denver.

You Animal Machine (The Golden Greek)

An exquisite exploration of motherhood and the elastic nature of time.

Poems

Body Clock

Lisa Jarnot

Anne Waldman

Diane di Prima

Andrew Schelling

Jayne Marek

Tommi Avicolli Mecca

Lisa Alvarez

Michael Mosher

J'Lyn Chapman

Amy Bobeda

Emily Trenholm

Christina Chady

Stephanie Hempel

Chloe Tsolakoglou

Ada McCartney

Diana Lizette Rodriguez

Thick Code

Matt Clifford

May June

Peter Belly

Obinna Chilekezi

Sarah Escue

Robert Eric Shoemaker

Max Henninger

Mitch Manning

Sharlyn Page

Timotha Doane

Ana Anu

Chani di Prima

A poetry collection by friends, fans, and students of the late Diane di Prima furthering her call for revolution. This book features work by Anne Waldman, Lisa Jarnot, and Andrew Schelling among many others.

A Tribute to Diane Di Prima

More Revolutionary Letters

Eleni Sikelianos

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