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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Is it enough for me to know where I'm from?", November 1, 2005
MERCY MERCY ME is a book of poetry that deals with a poet's attempt at understanding the longitudinal lines of the soul as a country, the topography of which is comprised of her flesh. Here we find the author in the place between it all, the metaphysical zip code where the geography of the self lies. Like the Marvin Gaye song used to inspire the collection of poems, Georgiou contemplates different kinds of environmental fallouts. But rather than answering Gaye's questions on "where did all the blue skies go?" she chooses instead to confront the more challenging relevance of "how much more abuse...can she stand?" Her examinations are ones directly pertaining to her ground, her ocean, her flora and fauna, the qualities of her existence that determine her perceptions of beauty and self-worth. When we read the lines, "...how lucky I was to be / able to wear my history like a map across my body" (68) we can see just how important the notion of terra firma - this quest for stability in unraveling the mystery of herself - is to her. The setting for much of the work is distinctly urban, which accounts for this notion of an individual being enveloped by her environment. And it is a very real feeling for the reader, particularly in poems like "Bang", where the cycle of abuse has swelled into an almost manifest destiny demarcated by "red marks" on the body. Somehow this violence is lulled by the day-to-day life in the "overcrowded land" of the city, a scenario, as we are reminded by the poet, too many have chosen to disregard. MERCY MERCY ME is a wonderfully intimate glimpse into Georgiou's world portrayed through the backdrop of her relationships. It is more than a statement on the necessity of mercy but also one of healing and is written with a sagacious intimacy not often found in modern collections attempting to confront similar irreconcilables of modernity. © 2005-2006 Edward J. Carvalho (Originally posted on 1 November 2005)
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended, September 30, 2005
Unlike others, I'm initially struck not by this book's sexiness, but by its geography and demographic and how, like New York itself, this book manages to make the most distant places and disparate cultures feel local. More than poetic snapshots of (particularly Brooklyn) neighborhoods and areas (Crown Heights, Grand Army Plaza...) at the beginning of the 21st century, Georgiou's poems not only capture the multitudes, but speak from highly personal perspectives. Here is India, Ethiopia, Egypt, Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean . . . squished into the subway car of the poet's heart. The sensuality of this book seems, to me, more a product of urban dynamics than of marketable "sexiness" (in fact, the speaker(s) of the poems seems more lonely than anything): here is intimacy and anonymity, belonging and alienation, any one person in a million people walking the streets or riding the train home--and hoping to find love, or settling for sex, along the way. That said, yeah, this book may contain a few of the best "sex poems" in the English language. Here is the sex of prayer, and the prayer of sex. Sex with women. Sex with men. Sex and the president. Sex and fried chicken. It's regrettable that this Lamda Award-winning author's poems are being "reviewed" below by boys with internet access, rather than by the adults for which they were intended. Speaking to the latter, I also highly recommend the book of lesbian and gay poets she co-edited, "The World In Us." It is a stunning collection--much like Georgiou's own.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Georgiou's Act of Mercy, May 18, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Mercy Mercy Me (Paperback)
This collection rocks the Richter scale of poetry. Georgiou's imagery is dazzling, her language sensual, her emotions fierce. She moves freely between a contemporary urban narrative and more ethereal matters-a chance encounter with Marvin Gaye's ghost, for example, is not merely plausible, but one of the sexiest love stories I've ever read. This poet is a mistress of vitality. Her poems are tiny monuments to lust, love, and those quiet moments in between. I doubt anyone will find them inaccessible. If you buy one book of poetry all year, make it this one.
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