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Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
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Intersection on Neptune
“The poems in Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s two-section collection Intersection on Neptune transport the reader from New York City to New Jersey. Along the way is a cultural swirl of Yom Kippur, Coney Island, and Cape Cod dwellings in the Jersey suburbs. Ms. Lee’s artistry, however, exposes truths on every page. These poems warm us through our shared recognition, appreciation, and sensation of just being alive.”—Charles H. Johnson, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poet, poetry teacher and reviewer
“To read the poem titles in the contents pages of Intersection on Neptune is to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island and get knocked down by a big breaker at the Jersey shore. When I encounter the power of these poem moments, memories and lots of foods surge healing empathy through my body, mind, heart, and soul. In these pages, Donna J. Gelagotis Lee fully celebrates the American immigrant experience and creates a neighborly pastoral of people helping other people, of people knowing other people in their communities, of people singing together and playing together and yearning together, a New York and a New Jersey long gone and deeply missed.”—Sander Zulauf, Editor Emeritus, Journal of New Jersey Poets
On the Altar of Greece
“Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s On the Altar of Greece actually does place its reader before, or on, an elevated place where the ceremony of everyday sublime life in Greece plays out. Without resorting to prefabricated classical references we’ve already heard to the nth, she includes us totally in everything she experiences and sharply senses there, the orange-turned-yellow air, corners of walls, the shaded grove of stone men, the dark beach, a thread through looped thread, Poseidon cracking a wave, goat bells, 'the speech unfolding / that flung dice against the white walls / until they wore eyes.’ Then, as important, there’s the undertow of her subtle and deft suggestions of how the people in these scenes relate, and of the intriguingly close connection she herself has to them. Ms. Lee shows us a new, vivid, freshly layered world inside an ancient and long-known one. With her eyes, strong mind and solidly classical style of picturing in new terms this historical place turned myth turned 'real’ again, the journey of our time at this altar offers us a striking, immense set of views of a world we thought we knew, and still, wonderfully, do know in much richer ways by the end.” —Don Berger, Judge of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award, Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, and author of Quality Hill and The Cream-Filled Muse
Intersection on Neptune
(The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019)
Winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018
To purchase a copy of Intersection on Neptune at Amazon.com, click here: Intersection on Neptune.
Click on The Book Shop at Sweet Briar College to purchase a copy there.
Advance Praise: Molly Peacock Dean Kostos
Biography
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee earned a B.A., cum laude, in English and creative writing from Sweet Briar College, where she was a Davison-Foreman scholar. She lived in Athens, Greece, for many years. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary and scholarly publications, including The Bitter Oleander, CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Feminist Studies, Jacket, The Massachusetts Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is the author of two award-winning books, On the Altar of Greece and Intersection on Neptune. She lives in New Jersey.
On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006)
Winner of the Seventh Annual Gival Press Poetry Award
Recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category
Nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry
To purchase a copy of On the Altar of Greece at Amazon.com, click here:On the Altar of Greece.
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Contact The Book Shop at Sweet Briar College, or click on Shop Online, to purchase a copy there.
Booksellers, please contact Gival Press.
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