Some of the scariest and most pleasurable experiences I have with my own poetry happens when I’m reading it aloud to others. The energy waves in that circumstance are a such strange mix of fear and ecstasy as the sounds roll out between us.

Eleni Sikelianos was born and grew up in California, and has lived in New York, Paris, Athens (Greece), Colorado, and now, Providence. She is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently What I Knew and Make Yourself Happy, and two hybrid memoir-verse-image-novels, The Book of Jon and You Animal Machine. Her most recent book of poems, Your Kingdom, is just out from Coffee House Press.

Eleni Sikelianos is the author, most recently, of You Animal Machine (The Golden Creek), a hybrid memoir, and The Loving Detail of the Living and Dead, poetry, both published by Coffee House Press. She has taught poetry in public schools, homeless shelters, and prisons, and currently teaches at the University of Denver.

It is the year of the student revolution in France. Elayne and I are in a supermarket in Santa Barbara, maybe getting some bananas, which I will later ask her to cut “like that” (waving my hand in the air in several directions), and will cry when she doesn’t understand what I still know to have meant lengthwise, and the tears are tears of frustration at not having enough language to say what I mean.