News from the Village: Aegean Friends: Aegean Friends

Description

In his twenties, an American manual laborer and poet found himself living with his beautiful wife in a village in southern Greece. Their first encounter with that country would prove an unrecoverable dream of intimate magic, but through decades of steadfast affection, poet David Mason grew to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a citiz

David Mason's books of poems include The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. His first novel, Ludlow, was published in 2007, and named best poetry book of the year by the Contemporary Poetry Review and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Author of a collection of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry, Mason has co-edited several textbooks and anthologies, including Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, Twentieth Century American Poetry, and Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. His poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in such periodicals as Harper's, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, Agenda, Modern Poetry in Translation, The New Criterion, The Yale Review, The Hudson Review, The American Scholar, The Irish Times, and The Southern Review. He has also written the libretto for composer Lori Laitman's opera of The Scarlet Letter. He recently won the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize for the development of a new libretto. A former Fulbright Fellow to Greece, he lives near the Garden of the Gods with his wife, Anne Lennox.

"Falling in love and riding out the consequences is one of the essential experiences of growing up. This is the story of a youthful romance with Greece that matures into a deeper love and understanding of a complex and conflicted country and its neighbors. It begins in an Eden-like year of sun, sea, wine, love and gardening in a sleepy village, the slow and childlike naming of things in a strange tongue. Mason combines the strengths of a poet and a novelist, describing the wild beauties of the landscape and village life circumscribed by tradition. The locals call Mason and his young bride ta paidia, "the children," and we slowly discover the snake in the heart of this paradise is not temptation, but willful innocence. Returning to Greece sixteen years after this idyll, Mason realizes he must confront shifting politics, village tensions, family tragedy, and history with blood on its hands before he can love Greece as she is rather than as he would have her be. Along the way, he introduces us to a rich cast of writers and ex-pats, shepherds and urbanites--and travels that stretch from the Rockies to the Bosphorus--the journey of a lifetime." --AE Stallings "Vivid and evocative, this candid memoir braids poetry and youthful earnestness with riper reflections. It brought back strong memories of my own youthful sojourn in Greece." --Rachel Hadas