Perishable

Poems exploring the relationship between joy and elegy. In Perishable, Stelios Mormoris asks incisive questions about the nature of human connection: Where does memory live—in the body, in the mind, or elsewhere? What happens when the objects that surround us—a wedding ring, an empty purse, a harp—reveal necessary truths about ourselves and those we love? As the book unfolds, lush sensory details and unmatched lyricism are brought to bear on these lingering concerns in a style as neoclassical as it is contemporary. In poems that radiate with intelligence, Mormoris combines understated elegance with finely tuned music and evocative imagery.

Table of Contents:
i. Lamentations 1 - Belle-Île* 2 - Old Girl 4 - The Stream* 5 - Mushrooms* 7 - Crossing* 9 - Indigo* 10 - Eau de Parfum* 12 - The Mourner* 14 - Interruptus* 15 - Vespers [10 poems, 17 pages] ii. Flora Mortis 18 - In The Roses 20 - Baltimore Spring* 22 - Yià Yià 24 - Watermelon* 26 - Ballerina 28 - Homage to Weeds* 29 - Spangled 30 - La Tour Eiffel 32 - Sigh: 33 - Arrangements [10 poems, 17 pages] iii. Perishable 35 - Party At The Mercer 37 - It Is My Revolution 40 - Jingle-Jangle 41 - Ken & Barbie 43 - Ode To Herringbone 44 - The Quarrel 46 - Perishable*

About the Author :
Stelios Mormoris is a resident of Boston and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, who lived in Paris most of his life, working as an executive in the beauty industry. Stelios is currently chief executive officer of Scent Beauty, Inc. He has held positions on the boards of the French Cultural Center of Boston, ACT-UP, Historic New England, and the Fragrance Foundation.

Review :
"The poems in Perishable by Stelios Mormoris pulsate with musical intensity, as they alternate between ode and lament, sensual pleasure and the ever-presence of death. Whether paying homage to weeds, celebrating watermelon or ballerinas, Mormoris paints a world in which ‘traffic sizzles,’ loneliness ‘burns,’ where mortal folly and resilience reveal the ‘cold lesson of distance’ and ‘terrible birds of our derision.’ Searing and poignant, Perishable moves through ‘thickets of diary,’ past ‘activists spitting thorns’ and ‘sweet alarm of children playing,’ toward a most human pressing question: ‘Is it possible to be / reborn with grace?’ With this collection, Stelios Mormoris makes space for us to contemplate such yearning and evanescence." "Stelios Mormoris’s elegant and tender poems are laced with grief and subtle notes of defiance. An inheritor of the aesthetics of Amy Clampitt and Howard Moss, Mormoris creates a many-faceted sensorium in poems that convey an aching sense of the world’s intricate beauty. This superb collection, sophisticated, nimble, and immersive, will more than amply reward readers." "The poems in Perishable begin in mists and meditation, as the poet encounters the stuff of the natural world almost phantasmagorically, with humans ghosting through landscapes and skyscapes where even the ‘tendrils of constellations’ seem to rearrange themselves. Then the poems move into the urban and urbane landscapes of New York, San Francisco, Paris, to Baltimore and beyond, where human contention, the immediacy of beauty, and desire all converge. The collection climaxes with the tour de force of the title poem, as family legacy and the heritage of nature come together in the bond between florist grandfather and child grandson, where all that lives can be beheld if we ‘look deep / inside the cavern of an iris.’ Stelios Mormoris’s second book pays deep and sensory attention to the world in all its passing and precious blooming." "Over time, memory acquires a kind of planetary substance, with a morphology and ecology all its own. In Perishable, we are able literally to see and to know the processes—some simply beautiful and tender, some complexly violent and fraught—by which such a planet comes to life. It is a thrilling privilege."