KOSTAS ANAGNOPOULOS : NIGHT PAINTING

As experimental as Stein, and as personal as O’Hara, Anagnopoulos creates his own mesmerizing language in this ripe, delicate collection. These are poems as immediate and intimate as an unlocked diary. The result is a wild and liberating work filled with tenderness.

 — Ira Sachs 

I admire the clarity, simplicity, and casual elegance of these poems. Kostas Anagnopoulos’ style is distinctive: keenly perceptive, playful, practical, and impractical at the same time, not trying to convince or coerce, remarkably free from hype —“Trees need no introduction/everyone knows sap when it flows.” Throughout this substantial collection, Anagnopoulos writes about the business of life — cooking, doing laundry, running errands, making money, having sex, and keeping appointments, all at a brisk pace, never “wasting precious momentum/while the sun goes down on you.” It’s delightful to spend a day, a night, a weekend or more with these poems. You’ll come away refreshed!

 — Elaine Equi

Everyone has disconnected thoughts and impressions. But Kostas Anagnopoulos is master of a hidden syntax that reveals how even the most transitory perceptions serve together in one’s own redemptive dynamic of courage, reflection, and care. Reading his quicksilver yet reconstituting poems in Night Painting can leave you ready—it did me—to count him as a vivid exemplar, perhaps confiding counsel, and certainly as a friend.

 — Douglas Crase