Nostos — (2000)

By V. Penelope Pelizzon

In choosing the winning manuscript for the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, judge Andrew Hudgins remarked: "With immense poetic verve, Pelizzon finds flamboyance in places where it has been forgotten and brings it back to vivid life--and she sees it for what it is. Her vision is then both passionate and dispassionate at the same time, a maturity of perspective that is just one of the many accomplishments of this superb first book."

In Nostos (the voyage of return) V. Penelope Pelizzon demonstrates again and again a worldly perspective, made clear and complex by her intelligence that is itself a treat to witness at play. Whether set in a Purgatory garden or on the platform of a bombed train station, these poems enthrall with language that is, in the words of one reader, "both the vehicle for vision and the vision itself."

Nostos is indeed a voyage--of the mind and heart--guided by Pelizzon's compelling images and rhythms and one that returns us to where we started, but not unchanged.