A Dip Into Poetry - "Four Poems from Greece"

                                            

Poetry is not my strong suit. I tend to feel intimidated by it and therefore rarely willingly reach to read it. My thoughts and feelings towards it were slightly changed for the better after reading Phoebe Giannisi's "Four Poems from Greece". I found myself the most drawn to the first three poems. I liked how each one touched on the theme of grief, but from different perspectives. In "Nostos I" the person's grief feels like an open wound. They wonder how people continue on living after a loved one dies because right now the pain of loss is dreadful and all consuming. Then in "Episode IV" we see possibly the same person much later in time when they are struggling now to correctly remember images of the relationship with the loved one they lost. In the first poem, the speaker felt that it was the remembering that would cause her to not be able to go on. The third poem shows us in fact how quickly the memories we wish to hold deeply go and we are simply left with what we think to have happened. 

Each poem took me a few reads to get an understanding for what was going on. I think that is why I struggle so much with poetry. I don't like to not understand what I am reading right away. However, I really enjoyed Giannisi's writing after taking the time to let it sit with me.