On the Altar of Greece [Paperback]

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2006

Winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award. Winner of the 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. "...the journey of our time at this altar offers us a striking, immense set of views of a world we thought we knew, and still, wonderfully, do know in much richer ways by the end."--Don Berger, contest judge and author of "Quality Hill" and "The Cream-Filled Muse "...Her poems travel both in time and in memory to Greek villages and to Athens, bringing with them the spiky sensibility of a contemporary American woman...."--Molly Peacock "..She knows that to empathize distinguishes the gifted poet from the merely good one, and enacts her compassion through the concreteness of her writing. With that physicality, she brings to life the numinous core of language."--Dean Kostos

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...The world of these poems is undoubtedly Greece. The statues are phallic and so are the men who inhabit her poems. Poseidon does move the seas and Aeolus still controls the four winds. Yet, this is not the Greece of James Merrill; we do not experience these poems through the lens of privilege and the world of men. While the men she encounters are equally a force of nature, it is the women who are the core of this book. Iona who hoards bread just in case the Nazis come back, the cook's wife who belongs to the cook, the women who scavenge for olives, the village women who casually reveal their sex lives: the woman who has never had an orgasm, the milkmaid who explains the importance of large vaginas, and even the author herself who says, How wicked I have become, I'm afraid, tending to myself like a feigned goddess, like Demeter before the harvest or Aphrodite basking in garland, anointed by her own olive branch. There is an earthiness and richness in the poems and they are at once feminine, sensual and melodic as they traverse time. ...This is a fine collection of poems in which the men and women passionately dance the syrtaki, starting out slowly with the tempo growing throughout the collection. The result is a book whose language and structure are a dance in which the past and the present partner ...Her poems are birthed out of a very complex inquiry into what it is to be an outsider in another culture. Sometimes she is crystal clear and at other times she grapples in the complexities of what she is recording and experiencing. This is really good news, providing texture to the poems in the collection. This range makes the journey of the whole very satisfying." --Eloise Bruce, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Issue 45, 2008

About the Author

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee's poetry has appeared in variety of publications from The Massachusetts Review, The Midwest Quarterly to Women's Studies Quarterly. She lived in Greece for many years.

Product Details

• Paperback: 114 pages
• Publisher: Gival Press, LLC (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1928589367
• ISBN-13: 978-1928589365
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,501,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry of pure art, April 25, 2007

By 

Music Mavin "Nancy" (Hunterdon Co., NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: On the Altar of Greece (Paperback)

This work of art is full of imagery and the essence of modern-day Greece. Donna J. Gelagotis Lee blends a bit of classical Greece as we think we know it with a surprising new, exciting and intimate in-depth view of that country today. Time itself is suspended. Each poem is a gem describing the very small and together adding up to a large work of the people, places and evoked emotions she experienced there. Ms. Lee is a new voice on the national scene, looking with haunting clarity, back at her eight years spent in that country. This is a delicious, can't-put-the-book-down read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A free-verse poetry collection that explores the majesty, venerable history, and wonder of Greece, March 3, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Altar of Greece (Paperback)

Award-winning poet and longtime resident of Greece Donna J. Gelagotis Lee presents On the Altar of Greece, a free-verse poetry collection that explores the majesty, venerable history, and wonder of Greece from an American woman's perspective. Poems contemplate mundane aspects of daily life such as food preparation or the relationship between neighbors, as well as holiday celebrations and the taste of simply experiencing a different way of life. An evocative and memorable tribute. "Remembering You": Gamma, epsilon... / Slowly your name spells itself / to me, my tongue catching the letters / along the contours, bulging through / interior openings that flip the letters / onto their backs. And I have / forgotten what they said to me. / I have forgotten the taste of your alphabet.