In A Thousand Questions, Iris Gersh gives us an intimate and imagistic collection of poems that meditate on the powers of womanhood, a reverence for the past, and the delicious “sharpened claws” of an ill-fitting love. Her voice rings with honesty and a rich wisdom that can only be acquired through experience, in landscapes near and far. The book opens in Greece, at a tavern with a lover and a gathering of men that draw the speaker’s eye and imagination, and many of the poems throughout document the years she spent living there, navigating a complex relationship even as she savors, and also struggles with, the natural world and the women of the country, including herself. “A woman ouzo-driven, who has fattened her nerves, has grown tired of serving…She can finally leave,” she writes, and ends the same poem with an homage to the very place she leaves behind, a place that, like her, is both tender and resilient. “…maybe what I’m really missing is your country, its light, its olive smell, its hardness.” Gersh’s first collection of poems also recounts childhood, family, and the cultures and peoples of the Southwest. It is a memoir of sorts, and also a study in how a bold spirit can transform a life.
–Emma Trelles, author of Tropicalia
A Thousand Questions begins with Like a Gregorian Chant, a reverie in a Greek tavern where selvaged thoughts unravel. It ends with Catskill Grey weather—the kind to avoid—in a place where dandelion wisps remain no matter how strongly the wind blows. In this chapbook, Iris Gersh travels around the world and returns home to wonder, “What’s steady here? What doesn’t lean, or hang, or need to be strung?”
Her writing is direct, though there are a lot of mysteries in these vignettes. Her poems touch all areas of human reflection—nature, love (happy and conflicted), music, politics, activism and more. Images are clear and evocative— “An elk’s bugle cry sounds like a shofar announcing the start of a new year.” “…college friends descended like so many brightly feathered birds…”
And, always, the book is about a woman’s life, which in some ways is all women’s lives. Crazy Women makes this very clear. It’s a feminist realization that women do what they must do to “twist, contort, and disappear” into their inner sanctums—not to be accepted by the world, but to protect and nourish their spirits.
Iris Gersh’s ruminations on her life long-ago and near-by is well worth our attention.
–Sylvia Ramos Cruz is a writer, poet, artist, and women’s rights activist.
STO KATO-KATO, POIÓS NOIÁZETAI?
“In the end who cares?”
Two brooms, a yellow soppy mop
balance against the black gate we painted.
Grills with residue of too tough lamb
hang on the daphne tree, its bay leaves shriveled.
A pitchfork leans into an unsprung mattress.
My sister’s bleached white shorts hang on the clothesline
alongside large balls of mizithra cheese, almost ready.
Garlic bunches are strung from a pole.
What’s steady here?
What doesn’t lean, or hang, or
need to be strung?
It is quiet with only
the sound of wind through the cypresses.
A few heavy stafillia plop onto the flagstone.
Black birds’ wings flutter as the birds swoop
to pick up the grapes.
A door slams, meaning he is home, and
the muscles in my back tense.
If I move, I feel pain.
What do you want? he asks,
He acts like his reading my emotions matters.
Sometimes, I answer, I want to go to the beach.
Louise says she needs a nap.
Chickens he forgot about in his bag
squawk, indignant for being forgotten.
Their hysteria catches till tears roll down our eyes.
Later we make a fire indoors and cedar logs
sputter and groan.
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