EROSTICS II
ninth iota*
(Digital Painting, Book Cover)
By Irene Koronas
The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018
ISBN: 9781912211135
Pages: 95
Advanced
Praise
Irene Koronas’ ninth iota explains
why humans want to craft something like civilization. It’s not just that the
uncivil can be fearsome — it’s that they make many recoil. If you’ve already
smashed those rose-colored glasses, the better to see, these poems won’t repel
and may even amuse you. But those still lingering (and preferring to linger) in
the dimness of the cave may look at these poems with suspicion—that wouldn’t be
the poet’s fault. Koronas did her job in order to write these poems: she
studied and analyzed human history, including naturally its myths. The result
offers unique insights with erotic charge as a bonus.
—Eileen R. Tabios, author of MANHATTAN:
An Archaeology and HIRAETH: Tercets From The Last Archipelago
Irene Koronas’ poems carefully splinter
and refute our expectations in visceral minimalist fragments of desire,
perversion, myth and magic. The carefully cleaved phrases accrue into strange
moments of fascination, startling us with their re-imaginings and verbal
dissections. Double axe facts and a high image rate mimic and re-invent our
inner worlds and dreams. This is language to chew and digest, poetry to ponder
and provoke; is the language of then and now and tomorrow. Let this
artist/writer be your embroid tutor while there is still time to learn.
—Rupert M. Loydell,
author of Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017)
and Editor-in-Chief of Stride
With a surprising number of unknown and
obscure words, Irene Koronas' hurls chalky men / into the underworld // of
mother repeats' and, in poem after poem, creates an erotically charged,
posthuman version of ancient Greece. Her language undercuts desire for the
mimetic.
—Nathan Spoon,
author of Doomsday Bunker and
Associate Editor of X-Peri
