Mercy Mercy Me
Poems
Description:... In her smart and sexy high-octane debut, Mercy Mercy Me, Elena Georgiou explodes traditional notions of sex, race, politics and identity in contemporary America. An English-Cypriot by birth and Brooklynite by design, Georgiou is part bewitched observer, art seductress, part spy. She dances across the urban landscape and reports back from the streets in stereophonic sound. Music is the overriding metaphor for the life she creates and its spiritual underpinnings. The Margins of desire are Georgiou's home -- from the first shudder of physical attraction to the awareness of one's body, one's identity, through the arms of lover or in the lyrics of a popular song. Her work is as much about the faith that beats of life and love as it is about the expression of these experiences, as beautiful and elegiac as they may be. Tapping cultural icons from Bill Clinton to Bob Marley, Monet to Mary J. Blige, her poems simmer with lyrical energy that blurs the line between the spoken and written word. The result is a language as accessible as it is original; poems that hit the ear as smoothly and seductively as Marvin Gaye singing Mercy Mercy Me, and resonate just as deeply. This collection introduces the voice of a brilliant new poet whose mix of words, music, images and ideas pushes the genre to its most exciting outer limits.
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