Κυριακή 26 Ιανουαρίου 2025

Anthoula Daniel: Lia Siomou, As a flower of the field. Eleftheroudakis Publishing House 2024 (Ανθούλα Δανιήλ: Λία Σιώμου, Ωσεί άνθος του αγρού. Εκδ. Ελευθερουδάκης 2024)

 



Anthoula Daniel: Lia Siomou, As a flower of the field. Eleftheroudakis Publishing House 2024Post author:

Post category:A condensed message, broken down into twenty-seven poems, is sent to us by Lia Siomou from the other continent, distant America, with her new poetry collection As a Flower of the Field. The poet has arrived there, where many people seek refuge for a better life, scientists for further research, scientific knowledge and career. And there she has lived for over sixty years, in a foreign land, as Andreas Kalvos says. But no matter how much she lived in a foreign land, no matter how many scientific awards and great careers she made, it was not enough for her to forget the Greek voice within her, the one inscribed in her Greek DNA. Sixty years are not enough for the feeling to fade. On the contrary, instead of fading, it has grown wild…


And this collection, like all her previous ones, all published by the emblematic Eleftheroudakis House , is the verbal imprint of a deep emotion that lives and burns far from her homeland, beautiful Attica, which is nourished by Greek tradition and at every step in the book we will find it. That is, we will find the Greek landscape, the anguish for what we call fate, mission, what will complete our perishable human existence, which gives meaning to the meaningless routine of everyday life, which sings its own song, in its own music, and appears in every stanza, in some hidden aspect, in the poem and in the soul. We will find in her poems, the Greece that moved to America.

Because what makes life interesting for a person who has lived his adult life and continues far from his homeland, without forgetting his roots, is his Greek soul, this is what stands out as a flower of the field. Yes, Lia Siomou is the flower of the field that blooms in a foreign meadow, overlooking the ocean. We are not fooled by American place names… they are a transformation of Greek ones.

The poetry collection consists of three sections. The first with six poems, the second with seven, and the third with fourteen.

In the first multi-line poem, entitled “Take me with you,” Lia Siomou communicates with the ideal other, whose help she seeks as she has always had. God, or an angel of the Lord, or a beloved companion, or the undefined One toward whom she tends and who does not know, we do not know, if we have the favor sought. The title reminds us of Yiannis Ritsos’ Moonlight Sonata with that emblematic woman who repeated “Let me come with you,” but in the end probably never left her house.

The poet remembers the old days, the walk on the lake next to him, the road that separates her from him, under the moonlight, all in a, so to speak, romantic presence of the invisible, absent, who, however, is omnipresent, although his specter is increasingly distant, estranged... But it's not his fault, it's her fault that she doesn't want to make the decision that their paths are separate... and he leaves in the boat...

Take me with you, in the boat / that calmly crosses / the cold waters of the lake. / The oars so silent, / the waters so calm / And you so invisible, so / apathetic to everything. / You gaze at Charon […] Decorated boat / that takes you / to the far shore of the lake / turn around and see me, / for the last time / I will follow you… / if you just say so … / Far away…

The reader will recognize in this poem, as can be seen from the above excerpt, that the poet has utilized all the traditional ancient Greek rituals, showing how much the heart is attached to the foreign world by them. She remembers that Dionysios Solomos' "Xanthoula" takes the road to the foreign world by boat, people generally depart for the Underworld by boat, Lucian speaks of boats and boatmen, Thomas Mann's hero arrives to meet death in Venice by boat . Yes. In a landscape with a boat, calm waters, silent oars, and he himself invisible and impassive; everything, although allusive, becomes obvious.

Beyond those that refer to sad and unpleasant, there are also cheerful and joyful landscapes. Her mind, however, does not stop at the surface, but goes behind it, searching for the mystery of life and death, this mystery that is constantly before her, in the waters of the lake, in the boat, in the leaves of the trees that change color – of which leaves are the generation of women and men, as Homer has said – she sees the course of life on the path that opens before her next to the weeping willows , in the windswept rushes of the lake – who does not recognize here the verses of Giorgos Seferis from “The King of Assini”, who does not see that river as the path of life that Siomou sees? Only, due to special studies, Siomou knows how to distinguish the fate of human flesh from microbes to cells, and not just from the labyrinths of the mind.

The theme of human destiny, therefore, the afterlife, has a primary place in her poetry.

In the second section of her poems entitled "And there shall be no more," she continues her dialogue with the shadows... ghosts... that follow the days of my life. Her gaze is drawn to the visible, but she catches sight of the one who is leaving, she calls out to him to delay a little, but he leaves, cold to her pleas...

Take me with you there, / in the boat that silently rolls / to the far shore. /

The waters are calm and the oars /are not even heard

The road this time is "To Emmaus" and the poet's concern for this road is obvious. This poem, like all others, has a purpose. It is the well-known but unanswered question throughout the centuries: And then what? What happens after death? Only Jesus has walked to Emmaus. The poet does not blatantly formulate her questions, but all the images with the boat always shrouded in death in the deep ocean say the same thing.

The years pass. The old house "On the shores of the Chesapeake", where laughter of love and joy once echoed, is now alone. But from everywhere rush memories of old happiness, scents of honeysuckle and pine trees, Chesapeake shells, the old blanket, the blooming azaleas, the skulls, the pomegranates, dazzling rays of sunlight. These, along with many other things, descend with torrential speech and claim her heart. Greek memories that intertwine with American ones, showing that wherever there is a homeland , death everywhere behaves the same.

Remember, remember my heart / the pure dreams of youth

And where the flashes of light dance around her, there sadness comes like a tidal wave to remind her that she is alone in the deserted house with her ghosts; Unbearable, bitter, Unspeakable truth.

In the third section, “Like a solitary sparrow,” we will again find all the characteristics of Siomou’s poetry. Titles such as “Don’t forget me,” but also others, bring back the voice of settled wisdom, the “Words of the Wind.”

In the catalytic question "Where did your beauty go?" she has a long list with all the suffering that time has accumulated in her thin and once blooming flesh/ our flesh; for fate is common. As if she were packing her luggage for the journey, This world has tired her, she can no longer bear it. / Time to depart.

Often the last lines of a poem become the beginning of the next, and thus the poem constitutes the continuation of the previous one and a link in a chain that connects the entire collection.

Remember / there is a path to take…/ [..] By the lake, among the willows that rustle their sorrow […there is a path that you must/ now walk…/

This is how the poem "The Dream" ends and similarly, this is how the next one "The Lake Waters" begins: There is a path you must take.../by the lake, among the weeping willows/ as the wind blows them with force /

The lyrics, the titles, the heartbroken words in memory of a well-established religious faith transcend the boundaries of ancient tradition and invade the new religion, advocating that man is one, and death is one, and the images that represent him are many.

The poems in the collection are of old and new styles. With rhyme, visible, invisible, non-existent, with an internal rhythm, with the pacing of the verse like the invisible and unheard heartbeat. And if the heartbeat is not heard, the "dawn" and the "grace" of the sky betray it, the "defects" with that "no" creeping between the verses that conveys the message of the inevitable presence of Grace. And the wind blew away with my own messages and commands:

Look... Look and don't ask/ Nature, life is beautiful./ And don't ask, and don't discuss

Yes, she is beautiful and unique to each of us as long as our lives last, triumphant in every moment, in every aspect, in every era. She sets her wise example.

Lia Siomou has received the message. As a poet, she has always known it, and this is what she weaves her thoughts into her verses… As for whether it is Time to Leave , no one knows when the time is; and these poems, almost all written twenty years ago, prove it… They prove first that time no longer matters to us , Elytis said this when he was young, and Seferis said that the poet has one subject: his flesh; and he said this when he was also young…

Siomou, as a poet, feels the weather in her own flesh, like all of us... However, we are all here and we write beautiful poems to sweeten what we have to endure.

Lia Siomou wanted to tell us this with the title of her collection, As a flower of the field . We are all flowers of the field that “like a flower some hand / will cut us one dawn”, as the folk singer says, avoiding the poet’s insinuations… Now the cover can also be read clearly: the painting by the painter and illustrator Giorgos Kordis, a non-profit offering to the poet, a genuine descendant of those great ones who put divinity in all forms at the basis of their art. The Virgin Mary, Mother, Nature, Earth, Homeland, traditional and modern, within a divine environment. As if she condensed all the meanings into one image. Mother Nature, Earth as the Virgin Mary and us her children in her arms…

And so the verses of Lia Siomou, like a stream, gurgle sweetly and tenderly. And the bitter speech becomes sweet, fairy-tale, filling us with peace, tranquility and acceptance. She teaches patience, she speaks, with the wisdom of one who knows that this is how things are and that order will not be disturbed.
Anthoula Daniel


The Greek text is https://www.periou.gr/











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