What Shall I Cry? by Becky Dennison Sakellariou

Whenever I read one of Becky Dennison Sakellariou’s poems, I am at once humbled and transported. Her language sings in a rhythm uniquely her own, probably because she navigates so flawlessly between the starch flint of English (whittled away by the “stern brown winter/I have come home for”) and the burnished gold of Greek (“the pale creamy pink/that suffuses the bed/of my body”). “What Shall I Cry” is the work of a mature poet at the height of her powers, transcendent in its beauty and its careful observation (“a slight/variation that probably only I will notice”) of the world we inhabit. This is a book grounded in an earth so tangible that I smell the mud, taste the salt tang of the ocean, and watch all the ants and butterflies draw from its sweetness. In the words of Ms. Sakellariou, “this earth draws my body,/my fingers, the soles of my feet/into its dry clay, its surprising fecundity, its obstinate resurrection…” Read it, and you will never think of apricots in the same way.
–Betsy Snider, Poet, NH

Becky Sakellariou is in love with this world, and so is keenly aware of its constant arrivals and departures, its withering edges and abundant blossoming. Acolyte to the seasons, she creates poems that are part meditations, part odes, part elegies—and all narratives of land, Becky’s latest poems remind me of Straus’s Four Last Songs. They have an autumnal feeling, a hint of melancholy but also of the richness of a life lived fully. As always, she makes us feel her connection with the land, particularly her fruit trees — quinces, apricots, figs — and lavenders in her beloved Evia. But she seems nostalgic even when she’s noticing their leaves, their colors, tasting their fruit or watching it rot. These are poems about departure, about leaving precious things behind, and about loss, death and acceptance. While “aching with the redemption of beauty,” she realizes that things do not get better, “they don’t/ get anything.” And as always, her language is dazzling, “sheltering shards of light,” as befits a person who’s in love with words.

–Diana Farr Louis, essayist, cookbook writer, journalist

Becky Sakellariou is in love with this world, and so is keenly aware of its constant arrivals and departures, its withering edges and abundant blossoming. Acolyte to the seasons, she creates poems that are part meditations, part odes, part elegies—and all narratives of land, sea, and the people who survive and die there. “Come, quiet on your feet, / the path is lined with lavender / and yellow sweet pea,” she says, and we must accept her invitation to “Examine the folds, the shell, the possibilities / of beauty and loneliness / and of you, still here.”
–Meg Kearney, Poet

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]