Earliest Worlds by Eleni Sikelianos
Coffee House Press
1.
When Eleni’s first book came out, on Post-Apollo Press, I got the chance to see her read at Teachers and Writers, on the same night as the both of the Waldrops. Her reading style was really impressive and engaging, and her new book at the time, The Book of Tendons, was equally amazing. I have always admired the way Eleni can mix the measure of music with an often-shifting landscape of images and ideas. What is not immediate visually, is there in sound, and vice versa. Both of the sections in The Book of Tendons are great, so I was happy to hear that Coffee House Press was putting out her latest collection.
Earliest Worlds is broken down into two books: Blue Guide and Of Sun, Of History, Of Seeing. As I made my way through these pages, I often copied lines into my notebook, and then went back to these great lines later —for me, this is the measure of a good writer, one who can create little pieces that stay with you. Eleni always comes back to light, which is one of the building blocks of poetry. I think of her as a truly psychedelic writer, not steeped in the old 60s definition of trippy love songs and flowers, but a true disengagement of senses and sightlines. Rimbaud was like this, in fact, Eleni’s words sometimes remind me of his verse, not in style, but in image and music. . It is important for me to clarify that although I find some resemblances, Eleni is a truly unique poet, there is no one out there right now doing what she is doing. In the first book, light is present, as a hum under the words; it is really coming through the page.
"Thus, spake lights and the sky’s zoo of objects and activities" pg 17
Light / “introduces itself/ to strangers” pg 22
There is magic in so many of her lines, so I will let them speak for me in this piece
by quoting them. Here are some of my favorites lines from the first section:
from Blue Guide
"Yes, yes, they still unload the crates / of Coca-cola in the winter/ morning sunlight,
some third graders’ milk cartons in the blue / plastic bags waiting on the street" pg 16
"I will take all responsibility for my birth / I was my own accomplice & adversary" pg 29
"To the fireball that started off / the universe some/ 15 billion years ago: Hello / from us
with origins in dust" pg 76
"A dreamer is only an angle of herself in a sliver or a drape" pg 80
Of Sun, Of History, Of Seeing
The dedicace to the second book states:
I think Proust invented memory / in a hive of glass that was his head. And using light /
as a blockade, I led my way / to victory—an elevator / in Proust’s neck.
2.
Somewhere in the same notebook that I was working in for Eleni’s review, I had notes I wrote as I was reading Schopenhauer’s Counsels and Maxims. I jump between books often and it is normal for me to feel connections. As I scanned through the Schopenhauer quotes, one of them immediately caught my eye:
“Most of the glories of the world are mere outward show, like scenes on
stage: there is nothing real about them.”Eleni’s words, which float across the brain, represent the subtleties of action, that slow tortoise in-between space, that little beautiful moment that you can’t get back. They are lines of reality that do not feel forced or chosen for any other reason except that they need to be there, exactly the way Eleni has chosen to place them. This is the beauty of putting words down—they create a space of reality of their own.
“I demand the complete / and independent sentence / of the limbs.”
In the second book, there is often humor mixed with questions about reality, or every day observations and ruminations. In a world of over-stimulation, this type of writing is very much needed— it represents the power of sublety in the written word. This part of the book is broken up into sections labeled “Essay” or “Note.” Many of the lines here take me through a breadth of feelings; at one point, I am moving through dreams, and at any point I may be brought out into another place. In this way, she reminds me of the best parts of Proust, and even the dream walking narrators of W.G Sebald’s books; one moment involved in the concrete, the next, sifting through the labyrinth of recollection, of memory. Some of these poems directly address our place on the physical Earth:
“Excellent Earth, magnet jar, now where are you taking those sandals (101),” but with the same music as the last book: light falling / when the rain made arrange around me.”
Some of my favorite poems and lines from the second book include:
“City between cycles of light”
“Note: Personal Freedoms”
“I sometimes saw double in the time just like one sees
double in space of space
doubling"
“Palace of Thunder”
“The well-tempered clavicle”
“Essay: Noah & the Washing Machine” (one of my favorites in the whole book)
“where we live it’s just
a little piece
of cement one could
measure & count
the cracks within”
“Essay: Who Thinking on her Legs (Manifesto)”
“Essay: the Infinite Assonances Within”
—This is about the NY phone book and is an excellent example of her psychedelic sensibilities.
“Histories: That Wobble of Light”
“For I
said I saw a flea circus and understood
a small planet and 20 billion frames
of families of a truth divine lording it over
the ghosts of material things which accompany human
bodies.”
I feel the same excitement reading these lines as I do when viewing Joseph Cornell’s boxed worlds, or reading Ashbery’s latest. It makes it very easy for me to say that Eleni is one of the most talented poets working today.
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