The Oculus

Experience the debut collection of poetry by author, Stelios Mormoris.  These beautifully crafted poems are at once accessible and profound.  Stelios Mormoris explores the nuances of love, ambiguity of loss and serendipity of sexual discovery….through the shifting eye of memory–“The Oculus”

the-oculus-by-stelios-mormoris

The Oculus

Early reviews of THE OCULUS reveal a powerful book of poetry. This debut collection is captivating for poetry aficionados as well as readers looking to discover poetry for the first time.  

“The poems in Mormoris’ debut collection scintillate with light thrown out from the streets of Paris, the Aegean, Christmas lights comforting a boy at night. Through the I of the poet–the oculus–the past weaves through the eye of the present. These are exquisite poems, dense and light at the same time, like mercury, infused with sharply observed places and studded with wit: wisteria that spreads like gossip; the poet’s dog, Zöe, rising from her Sphinx pose; oysters “doing it” as per Cole Porter’s famous song. The poet’s elegies to his mother in the final section of the book are especially evocative, rueful and haunting. A stunning debut!   – Nancy Schoenberger*

*[Nancy Schoenberger is the author of three collections of poems several biographies including Dangerous Muse, The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters, and Seven Blanches, a cultural history or Blanche Du Bois.]

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“The poems in Mormoris’ The Oculus brim with evocative, wonderfully euphonious depth, that resonates long after their reading.”
—Courtney Love Cobain
5/5
“Fragrance guru and consummate executive Stelios Mormoris applies his powerful sensory gifts to his evocative, candid, and intimate poetry. He epitomizes the creative imagination at work.”
—Renée Fleming
5/5
“The poems in Mormoris’s debut collection scintillate with light thrown out from the streets of Paris, the Aegean, Christmas lights comforting a boy at night. Through the I of the poet—the oculus—the past weaves through the eye of the present. These are exquisite poems, dense and light at the same time, like mercury, infused with sharply observed places and studded with wit: wisteria that spreads like gossip; the poet’s dog, Zeus, rising from his Sphinx Pose; oysters ‘doing it’ as per Cole Porter’s famous song. The poet’s elegies to his mother in the final section of the book are especially evocative, rueful, and haunting. A stunning debut!”
—Nancy Schoenberger
5/5
“Sun-dappled yet clear-eyed, foliate yet spare, pensive yet erotic, Stelios Mormoris’s The Oculus binds together tense oppositions to create poems of nearly muscular power. They fill themselves with the vitality of a life lived fully, brimming with experience and rife with memory.”
—Dan Beachy-Quick
5/5
“Like the Greek Archaic poets who surely are his forebears, Mormoris draws on the Olympians to weave memories with the everyday—Icarus and the purring cat. The alchemy of verse makes his longing and desire into ours. We travel through myth and the blurred edges of past present and past perfect to arrive in a moment perfectly painted in words.”
—Christine Kondoleon
5/5
“Like memory, sunlight itself is both elusive and overwhelming. We live and we compose our lives in the interstices, in gaps both riven and secured by Vision. In The Oculus, Mormoris bodies forth a vivid myth of the interstices, bathed in sunlight, swathed in shadow. The myth is irrefutable and also tenderly familiar, an Icarus in aftermath. Here are poems of serenity in turbulence, dearly welcome now.”
—Donald Revell
5/5
“Ever a colorful and compelling storyteller, Stelios Mormoris now reveals his world and beyond through poetry. The Oculus is a beautiful collection, and how lovely it is to discover more layers of Stelios.”
—Kylie Minogue
5/5
“As the title of the collection suggests, the eye and the act of seeing, often through windows or other oculi, are central to this collection. Mormoris is in love with all that the eye sees and lavishes the reader with specific details and luxuriant language as he savors his life.”
– Maxima Kahn
5/5
“As the title suggests, Stelios Mormoris’s The Oculus offers the reader a lush and vibrant view of the world. Mormoris’s view is expansive, revealing the gorgeous, rich vistas that surround us all in daily life. In these beautifully constructed poems, the humble objects of everyday life—‘tournedos of barley,’ ‘the fresh mint on a wet green melon’—become divine, while the divine is humbled and humanized. More than flight, what Icarus remembers is his ‘cat purring in a stand of reeds, my father sleeping with his hands on his face.’ Mormoris reminds us of how ‘necessary it is to lose yourself in tangles,’ in the beauty that surrounds us, no matter where we look.”
—Emma Bolden
5/5
“Stelios Mormoris holds dual Greek and US citizenship, but has spent much of his life in Paris, whose cultural heritage, you suspect, has played no small part in the development of his work. His is a delicate touch confidently applied, and his understanding of form and technique, allied to an appreciation of aesthetic values, lends his poetry an extra dimension; elevates it. Moments of enlightenment or recognition are enhanced by classical allusion, magnified in imagination or detailed with a refreshing originality. His descriptive powers are considerable: throwaway lines, like his account of tourists “grazing on the excess grandeur of gargoyled boulevards” combine with the quietly moving, as when likening poinsettia leaves “fluttering in slips of breeze off Biscayne Bay” to the quivering of his mother’s lips on reading a devastating telegram.”
–Robert Dunsdon
5/5
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Attend a Live Reading

Stelios Mormoris will be giving three live readings of his debut collection: 

– At BUNCH OF GRAPES bookstore, in Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard, MA. is now on Tuesday, November 22nd, at 12:00pm.

– At the BOSTON ATHENAEUM in Boston, MA. is now on February 2023.  

– At THE STRAND in New York, N.Y. remains at Thursday, December 15th at 12:00pm.  

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