The Colossus of Maroussi

This morning I finished reading, I think for the third time, Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi. One of the really great books. I recently found this photo in a biography on Seferis, here you see Miller and Katsimbalis (who was The Colossus and for whom the book was written) visiting Hydra in 1939. On the steps of the painter Ghikas' huge house down in Kamini. Miller's description of Katsimbalis in the book is the writing of a pure compassionate genius.

Check out Miller's sun-glasses. Giorgios Seferis wrote: "...putting on his black spectacles as though to work on an oxy-acetylene flame...".

Intense guys, those two.

moustache tanaka

My friend has grown a moustache and it suits him well.
He looks distinguished and reminds me of all the times
I saw his late father in the movies,
often playing and looking like a gangster,
even without a moustache.

spitimou

I had breakfast outside today, the sun was strong when I woke up at 11.30.

My new book - later this spring

My new book: THE LOULAKI BAR and other poems from Hydra will be published by Miskwabic Press, in Calumet Michigan. Miskwabic is the former Vertin Press, who did THE CLIFFS magazine. This book, with over 60 pages of poetry and art in color, will be out maybe next month. It's hard but you have to wait...

Greek flavors

 

Here's a poem from some year's ago. Many years ago.


GREEK FLAVORS


I don’t like the donkey taste,
my son said,

inventing a new excuse for
not eating an apple with
a few dark stains.

The Corinth Canal

Here's another old postcard, this one from Korinthos, The Corinth Canal. Probably the photo is taken sometime in the 70's, before the motorway and the new railroad bridge was built. It's fairly steep, eh...


Here an old poem.


THE CORINTH CANAL

The view from the edge of the Corinth Canal,
looking almost 100 meters straight down
from the bridge, was magnificent but very
scary.

We had traveled by car from Athens
and stopped on the bridge and twenty years
later I can still remember the horrifying
experience.

But when I saw a poster for a trip to the
Corinth Canal on board the ship Mantalena
I was interested, since this must be the way
to experience those frightening heights; from
the bottom of the canal looking up.

I asked Captain Dimitris about the trip and he
said it was actually a bus tour conducted by
the same company – you would go over the
canal by bus, he said, and the bus would stop
on the bridge so you could go out and have a
look down.

Sure…

Postcard from 1920

I found this old postcard, it's postmarked 1920 and for those of you who have been on Hydra and maybe even stayed with Spiros Kriezis in his pension, you can see his house there already in 1920. The large white house almost in the centre of the photo. Well, I think that house is a few hundred years old.

In front of Spiros' house are two large buildings down by the water, the left one is now the Melina Mercouri Hall, the island's exhibition hall.

The house that today is the Hydra Island Museum was not even built in 1920.

The characteristic mill on top of the hill - where now Maria and Lukas live - is not there in 1920, .

I can tell about other houses that are not in the postcard...