Homerica in Bloomington, MN

Poetry. Women's Studies. Greek Studies. Translated from the Greek by Brian Sneeden. For the first time in English—a volume of poems by one of Greece's foremost poetic voices. Phoebe Giannisi's HOMERICA offers a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis, re- weaving classical mythology with modern experience. Yet the mythic characters and scenes never feel otherworldly—rather, they appear alongside the tugboat, the bicycle, the television, and the helicopter. Brian Sneeden's masterful translation captures the Delphic rhythms of Giannisi's oracular poems, which rarely travel in a straight line but rather glide across multiple threads of time, like a look interweaving strands of the mythological past.
"Giannisi's poetry is a wonderful combination of the classical and the underground avant-garde. Trained both in architecture and Ancient Greek, her poems tackle the problem of how to inhabit the spaces we live in—from the abandoned lot and the swimming pool to the page of the book. What a pleasure to have the full Homerica series in Brian Sneeden's lyrical translation."—Karen Van Dyck
"Sneeden is a meticulous translator and a poet in his own right. He brings Phoebe Giannisi's work to life with immediacy and conviction."—Edmund Keeley