BIBFRAME Work

Title

Calliope

Type

• Text
• Monograph

Contribution

• Sideris, Hilary (aut)

Language

• English

Classification

LCC: PS3619.I333 (Status: not used by assigner) (Status: upgraded prepub)

Content

• text

Summary

"Titling a book after the muse of poetry and music might seem a gutsy move - though one that Hilary Sideris handles adeptly in her new collection - but this also was the name of her Greek grandmother transplanted to the American midwest ("unsmiling in her heavy black"), and thus a portal into family and memory and not always pleasant history. Moreso even than typical for poetry, this book is all about language, or languages, the intersection of cultures and lives living on in words, and more specifically in names. Including her own rather eccentric name: recalling that she was "a sullen child" - "I wasn't / joyful, glad in Latin, / propitious in Greek" - she finds now "I age my way / into hilarity." That hilarity, that joy, is evident throughout this collection, even when her subjects turn dark. An opening epigraph from the dictionary reminds us of another meaning of the title, naming an antique steam-powered musical instrument that once lured patrons over long distances to "showboats, circuses, and carnivals," and this meaning is also apt as Sideris lures us across the world to witness the spectacle of her life. Appropriately, she leaves us in a small unfinished church in Greece, where "We're beyond history. We have no / slot to put each other in.""-- Provided by publisher.

Authorized Access Point

Sideris, Hilary. Calliope

Admin Metadata

• Date: 2026-09-11T20:13:12.664932+00:00
• Agent: cbc
• Status: c
• Derived from: 23866764

Admin Metadata

• Date: 2026-09-11
• Cataloger id: Unknown
• Description level: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe-2-6-0/
• Description language: eng
• Description authentication: pcc