KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
In award winning author Helen Pilibosian's new poetry collection
A New Orchid Myth, she breaks free of culture with her charming
free thinking fantasy characters, the Everdreams.
Then as the spell of Earth
planted the idea
that melded their views
and welded them into a rebellion,
the two Tomians unTomed willingly.
They set their stance on the flowers
like a petal of promise
stunned by that nuance of nature.
Awakened and alert
while curt custom slept,
they crept into the future.
(pg. 5)
This begins the fantastical adventure that takes the characters from their
home on planet Tome, to places in America such as New York City, Colorado
and California.
A father sang of silica,
the jasper of jewelry,
from the mines and ghost towns
that fluttered with the wind.
The Rocky Mountains threw
those echoes out like condor wings.
(pg. 21)
As any couple who starts fresh in a new environment, the Everdreams have
worries --mainly concerning their daughter Taralee. Pilibosian expresses
these with humor, charm, and the metaphor of flowers.
The Kirkus Riew writes of A New Orchid Myth, “As she takes the struggle to
succeed in America and applies it to sci-fi, Pilibosian showcases her talent
for creating swirls of surreal imagery.” (n.d.)
A New Orchid Myth showcases Helene Pilibosian's ability to break through her
own barriers as a writer as she experiments with surrealism, myth,
assimilation, rebirth and harmony. She does this beautifully in this
charming collection. You will immediatley find yourself packing for the
journey with the Everdreams and dreaming with them, the dream of life.
A New Orchid Myth, A Review by Kristen D. Scott
Helene Pilibosian’s poems have appeared in many American literary journals and anthologies and also abroad. Some of her poems were finalists in literary competitions or won first prizes and honorable mentions. She has published the books Carvings from an Heirloom: Oral History Poems, the Writer’s Digest award-winning At Quarter Past Reality: New and Selected Poems and History’s Twists: The Armenians (honorable mention). Her early work has been cited in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. She holds a degree in humanities from Harvard University.
Formerly a writer/editor of The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, she now heads Ohan Press (http://home.comcast.net/~hsarkiss), a private bilingual micropress which has published 10 books of both prose and poetry, including her book My Literary Profile: A Memoir, awarded honorable mention by the New England Book Festival. She lives in Watertown, MA, with her husband Hagop Sarkissian, who does the technical work on her books.
Award winning author Kristen D. Scott's poems have published in many foreign and American journals, magazines, newspapers, and ezines.
She has published two personal collections of poetry from Garden Oak Press, Liasions (2012) and her new collection Opiate (2014).
Kristen is Editor In Chief, founder and web master of Knot Magazine. She resides on the Turkish Riviera.
