Chimera

Giannisi’s ambitious and often vivid collection, her third in English (after Cicada), features genre-bending poems drawing on three years of field research on the goat-herding customs of the Vlachs, a people of Northern Greece and the Southern Balkans. The opening poem sets the stage for her experiments in voice and interest in the relationship between humans and animals: “the narrator says:// goatfold of Yannis Mourtos in Kalamaki Larissa./ 750 stock, 700 females. goats.// two winters I went among the fold with Chara/ I saw the animals scream and fuck/ (when the human let them)/ I saw the animals being born/ (with the help of the human)/ I saw the animals graze/ (led by the human).” Combining field recordings, state archives, and ancient texts, Giannisi’s poems feature philosophical and academic reflections that can sometimes drag: “The herd isn’t simply a society of animals... domesticated animals, monitored and controlled and intended for consumption. I’ve just spoken about domestication, about indoctrination, about appropriation... the herd is a group of animals raised with the purpose of being used and consumed by humans.” By contrast, “Darkness Again” offers some of the best of her lyric writing: “for years the dead didn’t bother us/ we tucked them one by one into the earth.” Readers will find this strange and captivating. (July)