Two poems by Gabriela Marie Milton translated into Greek by Vasiliki Petroudi – poetry

My Dear Readers,

In everyone’s life there are unforgettable moments filled with magic and light on which our names are engraved forever. I lived one of these moments when Vasiliki Petroudi sent me two of my poems she translated into Greek.

Vasiliki Petroudi lives in Greece. Greece is the land where the ancients took every characteristic of the human soul and intellect and made it into a god. A land where we are not assisting to a simple typonomy of name-place. We are assisting to an associative relationship between us and the projection of us into gods; a projection that for the ancients constituted reality. They embedded it into their daily lives; into weddings and funerals, into the cooking of the meals and into mathematical equations.

Every look at the Parthenon transforms the group image of gods into individual psychology. Our beginning and our end are born at the intersection of the Greek interpretations of notions such as eros, beauty, power, and introspection. Look into a mirror and you will see Greece even if you’ve never visited it.

My favorite novelist – Lawrence Durrell – once wrote:

Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder—the discovery of yourself.

Vasiliki Petroudi is a wonderful Greek poet who, among other things, translates poetry from English into Greek. She is working on an incredible project that Literary Revelations will present in June. Until then you can read more about Vasiliki HERE.

I am humbled beyond words that Vasiliki translated two of my English poems into Greek. These translations are part of the project she is working on.

Vasiliki, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Below you can find my English poems and Vasiliki’s translations.

Samos, perhaps Crete by Gabriela Marie Milton

[included in Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020]

on the barren shore
you play your mandolin
I conjugate “to leave” in the voice of trees
the air reverberates expressions of old gods
the space changes its mind
maybe it is Samos, perhaps it is just Crete
traces of death, glimpses of the future
your thoughts are cut in marble
scratches turn to yellow
delineations, conquerors of islands
the shore melts in the waters
your eyes tell prophesies
the time changes its mind
perhaps it was just Samos, maybe it was Crete
the dying mandolin, the smell of ripened olives
an unmade wooden bed
solemnity, delirium
the names of I,
You
We

The Easter of Roses by Gabriela Marie Milton

[included in Women: Splendor and Sorrow I: Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021]

my love
you know that spring will come
peaches will grow on one side of the moon
injured lambs will scream on the other
taste of strawberries
my hair freshly cut
possessed by new ghosts will look for each other
steps on the asphalt heard from cafes
the baptism of rain and thin yellow candles
a verse from Seferis hangs on your lips
the Easter of Roses with its cold morning showers
never to sin your hands nailed in white marble
the rode of your anchor
my love
it’s spring
it’s me
free your hands from the marble

Traslations by Vasiliki Petroudi

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

In the mood for you by Gabriela Marie Milton – poem -poetry

In the mood for you poem by Gabriela Marie Milton

The richness of the butterscotch sunsets, heated bodies, eyes pregnant with desires, incandescent spaces between the skin & white shirts stiffed with starch, heads turned toward the sea, a rose between your teeth, doors undone, amor, the judgement day is not here, let’s die on the petals of the wind.

featured painting: In the mood for love – MM Ciciovan

Do not forget to visit Literary Revelations, read our journal, and subscribe.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Portuguese Guitar – poem by Gabriela Marie Milton

Portuguese Guitar

The ocean hammers coffin nails into my bones
The boat too small to carry all my sorrow
I cannot fit into a single bottle the apple of Alcobaça
Levante winds throw roses on my windows  
I want you now to save me from this hollow spleen
The magical twelve strings guitar of Fado Português
The twelve apostles of the unknown Christ
To stretch my body till I fall asleep
Between twelve apples
And your lips

featured image: the initials of my first and middle name – Portuguese hand-made tiles

Reminder

Please do not forget the visit Literary Revelations Journal.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Neurosis by Gabriela Marie Milton – poem – poetic prose

Neurosis

I suspect I suffer from an acute crisis of half-bloomed neurosis. My past emotions do not fully interfere with my current experiences. The converse is true too. No sophistry added. How boring.

I work my magic. I jump in the water dressed in black lingerie made from Calais laces and Lyon silks. I can feel the waves pounding my body while my mind drowns in the ambiguity of the French Nouveau Roman standing mid-way between modernism and post-modernism like a drunken sunset that cannot distinguish between yellow and orange.

The foliage of the sea turns burgundy. Your fingers contour my face.

Oh, you.

I forget that my favorite poet is Arthur Rimbaud with his “A thousand Dreams within me softly burn” and “I shed more tears than God could ever have required.” All I remember is that once I wrote: “I’ve never existed outside of your obsession with me and my interpretations of you.” 

There is something about these interpretations that make you burst in cascades of laughter and art your love for me with lust.

One morning, left by my pillow, I found your reply written on a large index card: “I had to bury your existence inside my obsessions. If not, your love could not have been fully stabilized. You above anyone else know that an absolute correspondence in love does not exist. Love is a mathematical singularity.”

From my #1 Amazon bestselling book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow (Vita Brevis Press, 2021)

Reminder

Please remember to visit Literary Revelations site for new posts and updates on the upcoming poetry book Love, Stars, and Paradigms by Swarn Gill.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

I am your soul – poem by Gabriela Marie Milton

I am your soul – poem [fragment]

look for me my love

my body shines like lightning

striking down from Mount Olympus

I’m the tremble of each tear

which poor hungry children shed

I’m the prayer of the lonely

the garden where the virgins blush

the mystic bite of occult ecstasies

I’m hidden in the Sistine Chapel

in haunted graveyards at midnight

I’m bursting from the keys of the piano

which plays alone Beethoven’s 5th

Included in my book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings (Vita Brevis Press, 2020)

Updates on Literary Revelations

I am thrilled to let you know that Literary Revelations will publish Swarn Gill’s wonderful poetry collection: Love, Stars, and Paradigms. Please read the book’s foreword here: https://literaryrevelations.com/2023/02/28/coming-in-april-love-stars-and-paradigms-a-poetry-collection-by-swarn-gill-foreword/. I hope you enjoy it.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Gabriela Marie Milton – poem – poetic prose

Poem – Poetic Prose

You knew where the world began. I will find too. I will drown in the sea where olive trees end, and Rimbaud’s atrocious sunsets start. I will become the forget-me-not of the waters.

Do you remember when there were 14 days in a week, all of them Sundays?

My blood, first thought to be of a certain type.  Now classified differently. In the entire world there is only a very small number of people that have the same type of blood as I do. It must be a mistake. Can we start over?

Sweet love don’t cry.

The 15th day of the week will be the day of mirth. Yellow laughter and photographs stretched from my soul to the ledge of the windows.

Waters.

Forget-me-not.

featured image: Claude Monet – Water Lilies

Reminders

Please do not forget our incredible collection Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology. You can buy it HERE.

Please visit Literary Revelations Website and subscribe. There is a new weekend interview up. You can read it HERE.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

A Poem by Vance Walker Included in Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology

As of this writing Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology is still running #1 on Amazon New Releases [poetry anthologies]. This is almost the 5th day. I cannot tell you how humbled and delighted I am. The poetry in this volume is fantastic. 150 poets wrote about their childhood. Joy and pain. Tears and smiles.

Today coming from childhood the voice of Vance Walker.

PAST AS PROLOGUE – VANCE WALKER

Under the old oak tree
where they hung our swing
we three would play
till the bell would ring

and we burned our hands
on the fisherman’s rope
and skinned our knees
on the fireman’s pole

In our big tree house
with lights but no water
we three played
two sons and a daughter

Using cherries for blood  
our ammunition was mud
squirt guns for rain
It was all just pantomimed pain

And I could hold my breath
much longer than you
under the old oak tree
when it was just us two

Except on that day
on that afternoon
when that rope around your neck
turned your face bright blue

I didn’t know what to do
under that old oak tree
Hang on hold on
I’ll get you free 

We had our GI Joes
up to their necks in mud
and flying through the air
and landing with a thud

And I could hold my breath
much longer than you
except on that day
on that afternoon

when you banged to the floor
when I banged down the door
blood, not mud
and your face bright blue

I didn’t know what to do
tears coming down like rain
you in your cherry juice
you and your phone cord noose

Remember when
we had to pantomime pain?

Well it was we three
then it was us two
now it’s just me
me alone

using tears for rain
and I don’t have to pantomime pain.

Vance Walker has been writing poetry since he was a little boy. Recent poetry published: When Smooth-Faced Wooers Woo, in the Wingless Dreamer’s Breath of Love, Poems for Global Poemic, Vita Brevis Press, and The Gay & Lesbian Review. His play, You’ve Got To Keep Mother Alive, was recently performed at Scribe Stages. 

Updates:

My deepest apologies for not being able to return your likes. At this point Word Press is working to fix several problems that occurred with this site. I believe I can reply to your comments on my site, but I cannot leave comments or like other sites. I hope this problem gets fixed soon.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

A reading from Hidden in Childhood and some updates

Thank you again to the contributors to our Literary Revelations Poetry Anthology Hidden in Childhood. I am truly humbled you trusted me with your magnificent poetry. Equally, thank you to everyone who has been supporting our endeavor. I am grateful for your shares, comments, and encouragement.

To the contributors: Please read your email. To celebrate our anthology you are invited to participate on Victoria Onofrei’s Show “Victoria in Verse,” [Radio Bloomsbury] this Saturday January 21 at 10 am Central Time (USA). The show will be recorded this Saturday and it will be broadcast on Sunday January 29, when we hope our anthology will be out (the exact release date depends on Amazon).

On the release date: I will keep everyone posted. Please stay tuned and check your email, my blog, my social media, as well as the Literary Revelations’ website for more updates.

Preface: If you did not read the preface to Hidden in Childhood please read it HERE.

Below please find my reading of my poem included in Hidden in Childhood. I hope you enjoy it.

Please check our latest feature on Literary Revelations’ Journal: PS Conway, An American Poet with Irish Roots.

Thank you. Have a lovely week.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Award Winning Author
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Hidden in Childhood – Full Cover Reveal and Preface

I read your words and a thousand childhoods burrowed into my heart.

  • Gabriela Marie Milton

My Dear Readers

Thank you to everyone who submitted to Literary Revelations Publishing House’s collection Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology, due to be released late January. If anything changes, I will let you know.

I am thrilled to release the full cover of the anthology and the preface I wrote. I have tears in my eyes. Here is why.

I am beyond humbled by the number of submissions. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for entrusting me with your beautiful poetry. Most important you entrusted me with glimpses of your childhood. That honors me more than words can possibly express. I rarely talk about myself. Yet, last night after 14 hours of work I was listening to the winter knocking on my windows and thinking of your poems. A sentence inscribed itself into my soul. It will stay with me forever. I read your words and a thousand childhoods burrowed into my heart.

We are looking at a monumental work of poetry; a work of breathtaking beauty and substance. I included over 150 poets and around 280 poems. The Word file I will send for formatting tomorrow has 456 pages. I suspect after the formatting the anthology will have over 456 pages. Congratulations to everyone who was included.

I wrote a good number of rejection letters and I am not done yet. To those poets who were rejected: please do not get discouraged. I am honored by your submissions too and ready to collaborate with you in the future.

One other important thing I learned by reading your poems: this collection teaches the reader about childhood perhaps more than an academic treaty could do it.

————–

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology – preface by Gabriela Marie Milton

If you open the pages of this poetry collection, you will be mesmerized by the talent of the contributors, and by the range of stylistic approaches they use to recreate the world of childhood.  It must be said from the beginning that this is not a poetry collection for children. The pages you will read memorialize the beauty and magic of childhood – remembrance of love and fairytales – as well as its ugliness – abuses, poverty – that unfortunately still exist in our world. Some of the authors of the poems included in this anthology were brave enough to talk about the pain they endured in childhood. I salute all contributors: those who tell the world that childhood is love, and those who still bear the wounds of a difficult childhood.

As the editor, curator, and publisher of this book, I am honored and humbled that so many poets entrusted me with their work. The poems I included in this anthology are stunners. They are magnificent in their wealth of emotions, and very diverse in style. It is the role of the editor to try – as much as she/he can- to stylistically unify the works included in poetry collections. To a certain extent, I decided against it. I allowed for English spelling, as well as for American spelling. I overlooked places where perhaps I would have used different words, in the interest of clarity. Why did I do it? Two reasons: (1) These breathtaking poems have their own energy, an energy that continuously echoes in one’s soul, and it sends shivers down the spine of the reader. There is a freshness about them, freshness in front of which the strive for better formulations ends up in patheticism. (2) Perfection is most of the time sterile. There are emblematic poets who sometimes consciously allowed for small degrees of clumsiness – here and there – in their poems in order to preserve the authenticity of the feelings. I hope I did that in this collection.  

The themes and archetypes the contributors use are very diverse. You will find the father as the protector and/or as the abuser, the figure of the mother as the nurturer and/or as the monster, the loss of siblings, the heavenly paradise of grandparents, the fight with disease, and the list can continue.     

To turn to a different idea, once Charles Baudelaire wrote, “The child sees everything in a state of newness… Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and color.” No doubt, during childhood we are first and foremost the recipients of the sensory world.  

The academic literature on childhood – as well as our common understanding – frequently defines childhood as a period of our lives that precedes adulthood.  Whatever happens during our first years is formative and important to our becoming. However, we tend to dissociate childhood from maturity. Most people subscribe to the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.

Indeed, the prima facie reading of the poems included in this anthology shows that the authors kept in mind the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.

Yet, what strikes the reader during the second and/or third reading of these stunning poems is how present childhood is in the lives of the authors, now mature people.  For these poets, whether they know it or not, childhood is not a simple memory filled with joy or pain.  Childhood constitutes itself as an integral part of their poems, a part that continues to transform them as they write.

The strength of this poetry collection is the capacity of its authors to blur the line between childhood and adulthood. Whether the authors talk about joyful memories, or sadly abusive childhood, the effect is stunning. We do not know anymore where childhood stops, and adulthood starts.

Am I returning to Philippe Ariès and his Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1960), who put forward the idea – albeit controversial – that during medieval times childhood was not recognized as a distinct phase of human existence?

No. I am not. I merely claim that the idea of childhood is not as transient as authors such as Ray Bradbury claimed.

In many aspects, childhood never goes away. It stays with us forever.

This is what you will discover in this anthology, which contains the most beautiful, as well as the most heart-wrenching, verses one has ever read. And this is a phenomenal discovery.

Gabriela Marie Milton
author, editor, publisher

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology – Front Cover Reveal

Dear Readers,

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. I am thrilled to share the front cover of Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology to be released by Literary Revelations Publishing House late January 2023.

Given the high volume of submissions only 75 contributors have received news from me. Please check your email. You may be one of them.

We are still working on selecting new poems so those of you who did not hear from me, please stay tuned. I will be in touch.

Remember submissions are still open until January 3, 2023. You can find the guidelines for submission Here.

I would like to share some of my thoughts on the poems that I have already read.

Thoughts on Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology

As the editor, curator, and publisher of this this book, I am honored and humbled that so many poets entrusted me with their outstanding work. I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart.  

I am mesmerized by the talent of the contributors, and by the range of stylistic approaches used to recreate the world of childhood.  I must say from the beginning that this is not a poetry collection for children. The poems selected memorialize the beauty and magic of childhood – remembrance of love and fairytales – as well as its ugliness – abuses, poverty – that unfortunately still exist in our world. Some of the authors were brave enough to talk about the pain they endured in childhood. I salute all contributors: those who tell the world that childhood is love, and those who still bear the wounds of a very difficult childhood.

Charles Baudelaire wrote, “The child sees everything in a state of newness… Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and color.” No doubt, during childhood we are first and foremost the recipients of the sensory world.  

The academic literature on childhood – as well as our common understanding – frequently defines childhood as a period of our lives that precedes adulthood.  Whatever happens during our first years is formative and important to our becoming. We tend to dissociate childhood from maturity. Most people subscribe to the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.

Indeed, the prima facie reading of the magnificent poems we selected shows that the authors kept in mind the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.

Yet, what strikes the reader during the second and/or third reading of those stunning poems is how present childhood is in the lives of the authors, now mature people.  For these exceptional poets, whether they know it or not, childhood is not a simple memory filled with joy or pain.  Childhood constitutes itself as an integral part of their poems, a part that continues to transform them as they write.

The strength of this poetry collection will be the capacity of its authors to blur the line between childhood and adulthood. Whether the authors talk about joyful memories, or sadly abusive childhood, the effect is stunning. We do not know anymore where childhood stops, and adulthood starts.

[]

I look forward to reading the poems I still have, and I look forward to new submissions too.

To those of you who celebrate Christmas, a wonderful holiday filled with magic. A hundred year of love to everyone. I will update everyone after Christmas.

Please visit Literary Revelations Publishing House HERE follow and subscribe.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Award Winning Author
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020