POETRY
Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival:
Sifnos/Bresson
Sifnos by Henri Cartier-Bresson
An image in silver
of a Sifnos street can be bought
today at Swann Galleries
in Manhattan
starting bid:$3,000
There solid sheets of light
rain down on ancient
cypress
now cyphers
Beyond the sea
is another form of transparency
What art is there
to make need
of these elements
When sky is another medium
of light,
and existence, an invitation to love
within webs of blood
Once, Sifnos
had silver and gold
at the core
Potters, poets,
a treasury at Delphi
Hills terraced
like beehives
Then farmers, poets
and potters resolved
to sell gilded lead
as gold
and all the veins of Sifnos
ran cold
Centuries passed
the sea was glass
a Venetian town stacked
on the ruins
of this metropolis
The chapel of Seven Martyrs
set on barren rocks
has the dimensions
of Thoreau’s cabin
if Thoreau were Greek Orthodox
and a thousand years old
What need is there
to make art of these
Now that the stone footpaths
are empty
the child in the photo has gone
and Sifnos is a ship at sea
Yet the exhilaration of shadow
and vastness persists,
light and the odd sense
of loss
Just around the bend
lie
the immensities
of “let’s pretend”
Vasiliki Katsarou
Vasiliki Katsarou was born and raised in Massachusetts to Greek-born parents, and educated at Harvard College, the University of Paris I-Sorbonne, and Boston University. Her first collection, Memento Tsunami, was published in 2011 and one of its poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, wicked alice, Press 1, and U.S. 1 Worksheets, as well as in the anthologies Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. She has also worked in film and television production in France and Greece, and written and directed an award-winning 35mm short film, Fruitlands 1843, about the Transcendentalist utopian community. She directs the Panoply Books Reading Series in Lambertville, New Jersey. In October 2014, Vasiliki was one of fifty poets invited to read her work at the 15th biennial Dodge Poetry Festival.
WEBSITE: www.onegoldbead.com