Review of EARTH LISTENING, Poems by Becky D. Sakellariou

 

Review of  EARTH LISTENING, Poems by Becky D. Sakellariou, with a CD of the author reading selected poems, Hobblebush Books, 17-A Old Milford Road, Brookline,

New Hampshire 03033, 2010, The Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series, Volume II, www.hobblebush.com, $15.

Review by Barbara Bialick, author TIME LEAVES

From Euboia, Greece to the state of New Hampshire, Becky Sakellariou meditates on life

“with its depth, its explorations of love and loss (to what) seems to be like one long prayer…” according to reader Patricia Fargnoli. Indeed, as the author says in her own words, “These poems explore what I call the beginning of dying, the way our pores open to the world even more intensely as we age…”

The poem “The Inside of a Prayer” begins with the epigraph:  “We are all descendants of travelers”—William Least Heat Moon. The poem reads:  “Hold still/the translucent moon…Hang it above the blood/scarlet sumac and let it tell us/of the women and men/who boarded wooden ships/who traveled through eons/of other moons/to become you.”

She continues this line of thought in “God Doesn’t Need a Boat”:  Come, ferryman of our fears,/carry our boat across the gap/the one between fire and daylight/…Bear us back into the light.”

To the author, what is most “unexpected is death”.  In the poem “Unexpected”, she concludes “A quick, violent wind/…roars across the fields/…into the tomorrow of worry, fear/another harvest gone,/another year lost.”

Becky D. Sakellariou was born and raised in New England but has lived most of her adult life in Greece. Since 2007, she has been going back and forth to New Hampshire for part of every year.  She has a B.A. in Literature from Antioch College and a M.Ed. in Cross-Cultural Education from Lesley College.  She has published in a variety of journals. In 2005, she won first prize in the Blue Light Press Chapbook contest for THE IMPORTANCE OF BONE.