“In his latest book of poems, Manolis celebrates the “imperfect perfection of the imperfect chaos,” energetic and lucid philosophic meditations on the mysteries of being human.”Übermensch” is derived from one of Nietzsche’s most challenging and frequently misunderstood concepts, the Superman or Overman. Nietzsche believed that we are capable of being better than we are, possessing more understanding, more compassion, greater wisdom and more awareness which allows humanism to fill the void left by the absence of God. As Virgil led Dante on his midlife journey, the Übermensch is our guide through modernity. Manolis has extended his range, celebrating the magnetic possibilities of the self in a narrative that takes us on an intellectual and spiritual journey. The poems possess a vitality of sensuous music in a sea of thought, kinetic and direct, imbued by rational compassion and mystic clarity, in poems that transcend the quotidian to enrapture us by the enigma of an unchained life. The voice in the poems awakens us to the next stage of consciousness and moves through impenetrable breath like a river that flows through the spiritual body, mouth to mouth, reviving language from the still bones of silence. Übermensch is a reverie in the best traditions of poetry, a poetic sacrament from which the taste of language rises like honey oozing in the ear. With Nietzche’s Zarathustra as an inspiration, every word a music more music than music and after the silence breaks, the voice goes on forever. In Übermensch, with the Greek en face, the taste and texture of the language transforms the empyreal whose accents linger long in the vocabulary of the imagination.”
~Richard Olafson
Χρέος
Όλα ήταν χαμένα. Είχε έρθει η ώρα του Χάρου
κι αφού είχε πεθάνει ο Θεός μας φυτέψαμε ένα γιακίνθι
στο γλαστράκι σαν να `τανε κι αυτό μια λύτρωση.
Εκείνος στεκόταν κοντά στο τζάκι κι αφού ανακάτεψε
τα κούτσουρα, είπε: ‘τίποτα δεν μπορείτε να προσφέρετε
στη μαραμένη ανεμώνη, σπρώξτε τουλάχιστον τ’ άδειο
καρότσι στην ανηφοριά ίσως μια μέρα βρει μ’ εσάς ή
και χωρίς το δρόμο προς το έρημο σπίτι’ κι έσκυψα
ν’ ανασηκώσω τον ξεπεσμένο εγωϊσμό μου, όλα είχαν
ξεκινήσει από τον παθιασμένο μας ναρκισσισμό όταν
στα φέρετρα σειρά παρατήρησα όλους τους νεκρούς
με αγωνία που περίμεναν την ώρα της ανάστασης.
Duty
It was all lost. It was the time of Hades and
since our God was dead we planted a hyacinth in
the pot and that, perhaps, was another act of redemption.
He stood by the fireplace and after He shifted the logs
He said: ‘nothing you can do for the wilted anemone
at least try to push your empty cart uphill perhaps one day
it may find its way back to the desolate house with you
or without’ and I bent down to pick my defeated ego,
it had all started because of our devout narcissism,
when laid in caskets I noticed all our dead who waited
for their resurrection.
www.ekstasiseditions.com
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