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Book Reviews

July 2005 The California Poem

Travel to the California Poem  

The California Poem, Eleni Sikelianos

Isbn: 1-56689-162-0

Coffee House Press

Great care is evident in The California Poem by Poet Eleni Sikelianos and this begins with the cover.  The cover of the California Poem is the first clue that someone with an eye for  detail designed the book.  All four leaves of the cover are a topographic map with a painting of the dry California hills.  There are single letters “O, N, A, L, E”  spread  across the cover and the book artist who designed the book deserves many compliments as does Coffee House Press for another great design.

I initially bought the book because of the blurb by our dear departed Robert Creeley on the back and usually what Bob likes I like and of course Bob was right.   

Book length poems are an American tradition.  There are some great book length poems in other cultures; for example Divina Commedia, Canto General and others that are seminal for our poetic world but most American poets not to say Americans in general are totally ignorant of global poetry.

American poetic epics have defined poetry here since World War II, “ A” by Zukofsky, Paterson, by William Carlos Williams, The Cantos by Pound, Maximus by Charles Olson; these all descend from that Prehistorical Progenitor, Leaves of Grass possessed with the desire of Americans to create a national epic a poem that writes history.

Eleni Sikelianos has given our “ Generation X” (born between 1966-1977) our first poetic epic.  The California Poem is a spare work beginning with a quote from the book by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo which gave California its name.  It is fitting that California gets its name from a novel since it is such a fictional place for most Americans.

It is important to talk about form in this Poem.  The Poem is filled with photos, drawings, chronologies, and what appear to be paste-jobs of words that make this work art as well as poetry.  There are whole pages of definitions, descriptions of the flora and fauna and extinct animals and it makes for a poem that is more than just the musings of some poetic idiot savant who only knows a small poetic world and ignores the rest of life Sikeliano’s is writing history and her project is welcomed. 

On page 20 a section “tore my hair off by the root”  and I just sat there reading it and digesting;

“ falling

headfirst toward

a human race

who’s toiled, tailed

by the tiny bones

that float unknown

to the body

rage, sadness, dismay”

then on page 21 “ skeleton subdivision the bones”

There are many environmental and political references in this poem that are interesting and lead to deeper reading.

As with many other California Poets of her generation like for example Jen Hofer; Sikelianos has a rawness to her work that is not part of women’s writing of an earlier generation and this makes her work sing in an atonal way and causes us to be challenged and disturbed after we read the work.

Toward the end of the poem true lyric beauty comes forward and these lines are worth reading over and over

“ Spring wears

material of elegance

Summer, sessile, is wearing

Thinner What shall I

Now what

Pursue now

What peruse with undivided focus in the froth

Of the present?

Let us hope that Ms Sikeliano’s pursues another book length poem again so we can have a work of this depth, craft and sheer pleasure to read again and again. Sikeliano’s work is a poetic success that transcends traditional lyric, “Experimental” poetry and geography to bring California and her poetic “Opera” to her readers even if they are in Chicago, the most “Un-California Place”