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Esemplastic: Many and One
by Karian Markos
44 Poems ~ 56 pages
Price: $15.00
Publisher: Highland Park Poetry Press
ISBN-13: 979-8-9880919-4-3
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
The unusual word “Esemplastic refers to a “blending of opposites,” “or shaping disparate things into a coherent whole.” In a world that, at times, seems more fractured than together, Karian Markos’ collection Esemplastic: Many and One is an intriguing read which offers unique insights into the human condition.
Winner of the 2024 Prairie State Poetry Prize for a first or second book, Markos demonstrates why Esemplastic won: it searches for, and finds, those things which work together for a satisfying life. Markos refuses to be used or manipulated by momentary whims. I’m printing in full, “Atomic Data,” to illustrate this poet’s head-on use of irony to establish her individualism:
I am not a Tik Tok chattel
a series of labels
affixed to a profile
I am not a commodity
to be packaged and sold
my eye movements tracked
I am not a Dole banana
stickered, bundled, sprayed
to force the green out of my skin
I am more than a random sum
of interactions catalogued
and housed in a neat box
I am. You are too.
Our aggregate power far exceeds
the value of their analytics.
It has been said that the job of the poet is to tell the truth. The goal of this review is to show Karan Markos’ unique ability to tell the truth.
First off, Markos refuses to be manipulated by a world set up to do exactly that. “Atomic Data,” sets the poet’s feet on terra firma.
Among the strengths of Markos’ poetry is her connection to nature’s rhythms as correspondence with the same traits in people. 20th century modernist poet Wallace Stevens understood and exploited the same theme in his poetry. This “Esemplastic” trait is shown in “Summer’s End”:
my summer is coming to an end
a smolder, skin barely a flush
desire’s wily arms slacken and sag
the seat of creation
from belly to mind
my summer is coming to an end
rose colored, it hangs low in the sky,
cicadas decrescendo bees prepare
for dearth, emptiness fills the vacancies
I am needed less, wanted less
my summer is coming to an end
my autumn is beginning
night chews the edges of day
mind skips the foreshortened winter
sees itself breach the horizon
my summer is coming to an end
a flicker in falling leaves
it kneels breathless at autumn’s feet
begs a Monarch on a parallel path to extinction
to ferry her to timelessness on his velvet wings
The use of repetition in the first line of each stanza, along with the lack of punctuation creates a natural flow connecting summer’s end with observable changes in the poet’s life and by extension universal life. I note a particular nobility within this poem. Truth, embraced as summer, kneels breathless at autumn’s feet.
I lead with these two poems to convey a sense of who this poet is. But there is more: Markos’ Greek American heritage is a study within itself. Poems such as “Sunday,” the Greek meaning of her first name, demonstrate an ironic sense of humor. “Nostos,” a term that means “welcome home,” provides delightful insights about her heritage and the role of women within it. I sense that Markos lives in solidarity with the “bronze-hearted mother, / shading her eyes day and night, / gazes over the horizon. / No man here returns to an empty shore.”
Several short poems averaging in length from six to nine lines each, profile the hope her ancestors had for life in America. “Cul de sac” is typical:
The door to anywhere was here
Our asphalt grew jasmine blossoms from apple seeds.
Our songs hung in the air at sunset.
Our feet made the footprints in the concrete.
We had nothing and everything
as we stumbled, shoulder to shoulder,
down the sidewalk where our dreams were born.
At the beginning I referred to Karian Markos having her feet planted on terra firma. Her poem “Seventeen Years Later,” seals the deal. Here, she addresses contemporary society’s obsession with “thin.” She bridges the gap in time from age twenty-one (what she thought then) to her perspective now at thirty-eight.
Karian Markos’ Esemplastic: Many and One is a fresh, wide-ranging, wise, and witty collection which has engaged this reviewer’s heart and mind. For all the poet’s sensitive introspection about life, the capsheaf for me, is the miniature, “Wings”:
I sprouted wings today
and rode aloft on a warm
gust of gratitude
life in panoramic view
gives me hope enough
to coast into tomorrow
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