Helene Pilibosian's Page

For those who have fallen under the spell of Helene Pilibosian's edgy, probing, honest poetry this book will 1) come as no surprise, and 2) will come as a very big surprise - that a poet so fine as this lady can write history, particularly an autobiographical book, as cogent as MY LITERARY PROFILE: A MEMOIR. To try to cover the events related in this book would take a review far too long to hold the attention of the reader: a review should only inform the reader of the nature of a book. But in Helene Pilibosian's case we are talking about almost a lifetime of experiences that molded the poet she became ('almost', because she is still very much with us!), and skipping over lightly any portion of this conversation with the writer would seem negligent.

Suffice it to say that it is Pilibosian's style to avoid clangorous prose, but instead to soften her written memoirs with a front porch swing conversational style that makes her heroic life and background and history and the events of her survival all the more radiant. We are invited to know her family - not just her parents but the cast of Armenians who have struggled in the old country for many years, including the near decimation of a people in the horrors of the early part of the last century. She discusses this, but while commenting on a past history that held such gore she embroiders her history with ethnic traditions, songs and secrets and rituals that cast a broad flavor of the plight of the immigrant known to every citizen of this immigrant collection of forefathers. She dwells on her childhood in Massachusetts and again without beating her chest in agony she lets us understand her position as a minority in the years before the word Tolerance was spoken. She follows her heart (and at one point suffers a cardiac arrest) and is able to glean from every experience she encounters a strength to be true to herself. She achieves a Harvard education, she enters the mystical spaces of Jungian thought, and blends ALL of this to become the writer of note she has become.

Grady Harp, amazon.com