Beginning with O Book

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.