Red in Black

Manolis' vibrant and radiant poems are infused by a powerful yet subtle music that resonates with the reader who revels for the vitality of the sensuous motion of the language he uses to present images structured in a mixture of Mediterranean and Canadian formats. Poems that make the reader discover the poet's cosmos as it expands from the microcosm to the universal. Images which declare that everything vanishes as it flows through people's fingers, yet from all these some become eternal in their wholeness, like the child's smile which cannot be stained by life's conditioning, the child's smile that cannot be blemished by the adulthood's guilt and banal everyday littleness. Manolis' poetry stands out among his contemporaries as this poet descends from the ancient modes and exemplary structures from which he draws and which he transposes to us in his personal poetic way.With Fellini-like attention to detail and fascination, Manolis frames existence not as a blind truth or an algorithm but as a variant that localizes the appearance of things, like the powerful warp of ambivalence life inspires. Can we do better? Is it possible to serve love in a more authentic manner? For Manolis, I think the implication in this collection is a resounding yes... and it seems to rise out of and I couldn't tell apart the fragrance of your body from the aroma of the lemon tree buds like a divine sigh. Ilya Tourtidis, author of Romancing Eternity