In the tradition of second-century writer Pausanias, George Kalogeris offers a series of meditative poems on his Greek heritage, both through the intimate lens of his upbringing and the vast historical view of the country's great literature and philosophy. Kalogeris's Guide to Greece is a warm and personal collection that ambitiously ties the diaspora of Greek people and ideas into a single literary experience. The struggles of a displaced, working-class family, in turn, give rise to musings on Antigone and Odysseus. Ancient Greek heroes inspire considerations of modern-day greats, such as billionaire Aristotle Onassis and baseball player Harry Agganis. Mirroring the familiar yet mythic call of the Aegean Sea, these poems at once evoke vivid childhood memories and provide new explorations of time-honored epics.
"At once boisterous, ironic, and tender, George Kalogeris's verse steeps us in a Greece where the ancient and modern link arms in one long song. The poems fall on the ear and rest in the heart through a mastery that blends the rituals of life and art together with consummate ease."
Michael Putnam
"In Guide to Greece, George Kalogeris brilliantly encapsulates millennia of Hellenic tradition in masterful verse. His voice is the timeless voice of the learned poet enabling the narrative of heritage with splendid erudition and disarming sensitivity. In Kalogeris's inspired poetics Pausanias's Description of Greece becomes the gateway to the universality of Greek myth in all its power to express
Stamatia Dova
"George Kalogeris's excellent poems show him to be a part of that amazing efflorescence of modern Greek poets from Cavafy onward, but he is ours, too, contemporary and American. Taken together his poems are a demonstration of an attitude toward life and letters that is attractive, engaging, and impressively humane."
