Olga Broumas ~ poets we should know

Olga Broumas

 

Sleeping Beauty

I sleep, I sleep
too long, sheer hours
hound me, out
of bed and into clothes, I wake
still later, breathless, heart
racing, sleep
peeling off like a hairless
glutton, momentarily
slaked. Cold

water shocks me
back from the dream. I see
lovebites like fossils: something
that did exist

dreamlike, though
dreams have the perfect alibi, no
fingerprints, evidence
that a mirror could float
back in your own face, gleaming
its silver eye. Lovebites like fossils. Evidence.
strewn

round my neck like a ceremonial
necklace, suddenly
snapped apart.

       o

Blood. Tears. The vital
salt of our body. Each
other’s mouth.
Dreamlike
the taste of you
sharpens my tongue like a thousand shells,
bitter, metallic. I know

as I sleep
that my blood runs clear
as salt
in your mouth, my eyes.

       o

City-center, mid-
traffic, I
wake to your public kiss. Your name
is Judith, your kiss a sign

to the shocked pedestrians, gathered
beneath the light that means
stop
in our culture
where red is a warning, and men
threaten each other with final violence. I will drink
your blood. Your kiss
is for them

a sign of betrayal, your red
lips suspect, unspeakable
liberties as
we cross the street, kissing
against the light, singing, This
is the woman I woke from sleep, the woman that woke
me sleeping.

---

Olga Broumas first published “Sleeping Beauty” in BEGINNING WITH O (1977), © Yale University Press. Reproduced by permission of Yale University Press.

 

 

 

Olga Broumas (born 6 May 1949, Hermoupolis) is a Greek poet, resident in the United States. She has been Poet-in-Residence and Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University since 1995.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Broumas

https://www.google.ie/books/edition/Beginning_with_O/S0a0DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

https://surlalunefairytales.blogspot.com/2011/04/beginning-with-o-and-cinderella-by-olga.html 

In Stanley Kunitz’s last year as judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competitions, he chose Olga Broumas’s Beginning with O as the winning volume. Of it he said:

Because of their explicit sexuality and Sapphic orientation, Broumas’s poems may be considered outrageous in some quarters, but I believe they are destined to have more than a succes de scandale. Beginning with O is as much a political statement as it is an impassioned lyric outburst. It is a book of letting go, of wild avowals, unabashed eroticism; at the same time it is a work of integral imagination, steeped in the light of Greek myth that is part of the poet’s heritage and imbued with an intuitive sense of dramatic conflicts and resolutions, high style, and musical form.

Last Poem Before Oregon                  

 

Slept in groves of oranges

Visited by only wet nurse bees

Shaded by impossible leaves

Cloud drifting shapes of which made harlequin

Dreams disturbed gently by nimble hums

A voice like Marcello young again

Lip sticking fully curved

Remember the time

We discovered our deep lush alikeness

And rose, perfect stamens

A fruit of aching beauty

 Wrote

                                                                                                          

 for Olga Broumas ~ by PD Lyons