ONE OF OUR OWN
Helen Mitsios, our Books Editor, has a new volume of poetry, The Grand Tour, out, and it’s great
I’ve known Helen for [scrambled… static…] years and always admired her lucid mind and brilliant facility with words. And I was so delighted when she started writing for WONDERLUST and even more so when she agreed to become the Books Editor, which meant editing NIGHTSTAND, doing features on books, writing more in general and, apparently, believing that she must single-handedly improve every single person on Earth’s understanding of antique jewelry and high society of the 18th century. I’m sure we’re all better for that. I know I am!
The Grand Tour (Main Street Rag Publishing Co., $13) came out this November and is her second published book of poems. As someone (oh, yeah, me) blurbed on her book jacket, she is an extraordinary poet who makes language dance and actually says something. That last part is important, to me at least, who is rarely a fan of poetry, because modern poetry usually doesn’t say anything and is too often a massive word-wank (think: poems in The New Yorker — all of them).
Helen’s poems are spellbinding and tell small, wonderful, poignant intact stories. In “Dans la Direction de Paris” she writes:
On the train to Paris
I brush my hand across your hand
then draw it back. I think of you
and you are already a memory,
the memory of a memory.
Sadness is your name carved on a tree in winter.
L’amour. L’amour. L’amour.
Ah, we’ve all been there. I know I have.
She references the Classics (Minotaur, Icarus are two) and pop culture icons (Like Serge and Jane in Paris and Frida and Diego, for instance) equally smoothly and enlighteningly. And as only the very best poetry can, her’s illuminates your own life.
Click here to order it on Amazon Kindle.
