The Arsenal of Beauty

by | Sep 25, 2017 | Thoughts and Musings | 17 comments

Name: The Institute for the Appreciation of Beauty in Ordinary Things
Founded: 9.24.17
Founder: Elena Georgiou
Mission: To build an Arsenal of Beauty to use in the War on Ugly.
Funded by: Crowdsourced with donations of beauty and power by the General Public*

The Arsenal of Beauty (The Black Album):

A Golden Warrior is as beautiful as a Golden Bridge.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A buttonhook is as beautiful as a buttonhole.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A chip shot is as beautiful as a lace fan.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

An athlete’s shoelace is as beautiful as a painting of a shoelace.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A medalist’s raised fist is as beautiful as an open hand.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A direct snap is as beautiful as an snapdragon.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A drop kick is as beautiful as a falling star.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A flexbone is as beautiful as a foxglove.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A Seahawk is as beautiful as an osprey.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A man in motion is as beautiful as a subway map.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A slant is as beautiful as a Sacred Kingfisher.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A walk-on is as beautiful as a waterfall.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A Steeler is as beautiful as a steelsmith.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A Jaguar is as beautiful as a jaguar.
A bent knee is as powerful as a speech.

A Raven is as beautiful as a raven.
A bent knee is an arsenal of power.

 

*Donations of beauty gratefully accepted in the comment boxes below

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Elena Georgiou

Elena Georgiou is the author of the short-story collection, The Immigrant’s Refrigerator (GenPop Books, 2018), and the poetry collections Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants (Harbor Mountain Press) and mercy mercy me (University of Wisconsin), which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award. She is also co-editor (with Michael Lassell) of the poetry anthology, The World In Us (St. Martin’s Press). Georgiou has won an Astraea Emerging Writers Award, a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work appears in journals such as BOMB, Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, Gargoyle, Lumina, MiPoesia, and Spoon River Review. She is an editor at Tarpaulin Sky Press and the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College. Georgiou is an English-Cypriot originally from London, where she spent the first twenty-seven years of her life. Since then, she has lived in the US — first in New York, now in Vermont. She maintains a website at http://elenageorgiou.com.

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17 Comments

  1. Mary Pacifico Curtis
    Mary Pacifico Curtis on September 26, 2017 at 12:04 am

    Wonderful, so needed, I admire every writer who has the grace to find words quickly for all the crazy moments we seem to have thrown at us. Congrats Elena, ever pointed and elegant.

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:29 pm

      Mary, I did the thing that I warn poets NEVER to do! Right the poem and make it public the next day. But I was desperate. I had to have a post ready to go–so this left me no choice. That said, I got out of my bed to change the last line. And after I posted it, I was mortified, worked on it some more. Then reposted it. If you go back now you will see a different draft . . . The work will continue. This is a subject near and dear to my heart.

  2. Jan Clausen
    Jan Clausen on September 25, 2017 at 9:23 pm

    I just learned that the NFL’s practice of expecting football players to come out on the field and display a “patriotic” attitude while the bellicose national anthem is played may have been motivated by payments from the US military. “As recently as 2015, the Department of Defense was doling out millions to the NFL for such things as military flyovers, flag unfurlings, emotional color guard ceremonies, enlistment campaigns, and–interestingly enough–national anthem performances. Additionally, according to Vice, the NFL’s policy on players standing for the national anthem also changed in 2009, with athletes ‘encouraged’ thereafter to participate.” (Think Progress ) A bent knee is indeed a multi-dimensional arsenal! Thank you, Elena, for bringing us into the presence of Beauty and connecting it to Power.

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:32 pm

      I had no idea.

      I have a feeling this might be the spark to a longer piece for me. (This is not simply responding to this moment in time, but something larger–integral to who I am.) For the past few months I’ve been watching a Netflix Documentary called Last Chance U. (About teenage athletes who have “done something wrong” and have ended up in Mississippi to be given one last chance to get on the professional track. I’ve been wanting to write about it since I began watching it. This might be the impetus I need. We shall see . . . Oh Time . . . Oh Hours in the Day . . .

  3. Lylah
    Lylah on September 25, 2017 at 8:42 pm

    A smile is as beautiful as a grimace.
    A bent knee is a plentiful bowl.
    Thank you Elena!

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:33 pm

      Love it! Thank you!

  4. Julie Parent
    Julie Parent on September 25, 2017 at 2:25 pm

    Amen.

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:33 pm

      And Ashe.

  5. Elena Georgiou
    Elena Georgiou on September 25, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    Dear commentators :-),

    Anyone who knows me well also knows that I’ve always believed that when Artists Team Up with Athletes they can greatly increase their power to do anti-racist work in the world. This is my attempt at this Teamwork. Tommie Smith’s raised fist in 1968 was one of the most formative moments of my childhood. (Did you know Tommie Smith was a Goddard Alum?) In 2017, is it a bent knee.

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:34 pm

      Thanks, S! (Reworked it. Will continue to do so.)

  7. Mary Cantoral
    Mary Cantoral on September 25, 2017 at 10:48 am

    Beautiful poem!

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:34 pm

      Thank you, M!

  8. Bhanu
    Bhanu on September 25, 2017 at 9:20 am

    So beautiful. It made my day to wake up and read this.

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:34 pm

      Still working on it . . .

  9. Laurel Radzieski
    Laurel Radzieski on September 25, 2017 at 8:01 am

    A dusty light bulb is as beautiful as a slice of cantaloupe.

    • Elena Georgiou
      Elena Georgiou on September 26, 2017 at 12:35 pm

      Beautiful! Thank you!