Helene Pilibosian (1933-2015)

It is with great sadness that we relay the news of the death of author, editor and publisher Helene Pilibosian whose work appeared on numerous occasions in the pages of the Armenian Poetry Project. She died from complications after surgery for a brain tumor. Her son, Bob Sarkissian, will continue managing Ohan Press.

Helene was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to survivors of the Armenian Genocide. After graduating from Watertown High School, she attended Harvard University and graduated with a degree in humanities in 1960, before marrying Hagop Sarkissian. She was the first woman editor of The Armenian Mirror-Spectator. She was 82 years old and is survived by her husband, children and grandchildren.

The full obituary in the Mirror-Specatator

Helene: Pilibosian: NO BOUNDARIES

I set Armenian miniatures

on a table before me,

their colors not muted by years,

their shapes worshipping centuries.

Their kneeling figures

spoke to my fears,

words they might have uttered

not always teaching by treading lightly.

The application of haloes

was faded in scope

but not in hues transfigured

by their original approach.

Reds and blues dominated

and conformed to the brush

as dark gold of haloes

drew the symbol of circles.

Their women, few, crossed my paths

as if some ancient memory

redrew them here

or took my consciousness back

to where I was searching

for their daily walk,

perhaps searching then and still

for a mother-figure.

Boundaries were blank

to this celebration,

this silent conversation

I had with the art of saints.

This poem has previously appeared in  Bibliophilus

Helene Pilibosian: HOUSE OF TOYS

I

I crank
the old phonograph
in a dream,
the song of Caruso
having slowed.

The past
is such a show,
a dream with a window
to open and close,
screened, cleaned.

I adjust
its cadence
to the song of life,
putting time
under the microscope
and spinning
with the stars.


II

The room is
large enough,
painted an accurate
shade of pink
to complement
the lights.

Dreams are toys
here. They
run on batteries
or they pretend
to prattle
at the children.

I throw a net
over those dreams,
metallic as the old
black stove that
seemed so perfect
when the trolley
ran on its track.

The clock strikes
midnight as children
of mothers become
adults and mothers
become grandmothers.
The clock strikes
upon the hour
of a life that is
wound for measure.


III


It is quarter past 10.
Business of the day
stirs baseball talk,
the exercise walk,
a change of counters,
calculations of painted
rooms and canvases
that draw lines
around the bronzing
of the sun.

It is quarter past
the dream
and a Magnificat
is playing,
praying,
evaporating into
a mystical mist.

It is quarter past
reality and
crickets of an August
that hugs us
are chirping.


This poem was a finalist in a Half Tones to Jubilee contest.

MY LITERARY PROFILE, A MEMOIR by Helene Pilibosian

MY LITERARY PROFILE, A MEMOIR by Helene Pilibosian, Ohan Press, 171 Maplewood St, Watertown, MA, 324 pages, ISBN 9781929966080, Bibliography, Index, $20.00 plus $4 mailing.

The author provides a remarkable historical journey through subject matter
that can be important in many fields such as education, social studies,
medicine and nutrition with many intriguing events out of her experience
with excellent writing. I can recommend this read to anyone.
—BURTON RABINOWITZ, M.D., cardiologist, Mount Auburn Hospital



A moving story, superbly told, of personal growth, self awareness and
fulfillment on many levels, tracing the author's fragile formative years in the
postwar Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, bravery and resilience in the face of numerous personal and cultural obstacles and immersion in the richness of Harvard's humanities. It tells of metamorphosis and self discovery together with an insightful analysis of the craft of writing, and the transformative and healing aspects of poetry.

—HARRY N. MAZADOORIAN, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for
Dispute Resolution, Quinnipiac University Law School

HELENE PILIBOSIAN was an editor of The Armenian Mirror-Spectator,

and is now a freelance writer of prose and poetry and owner of Ohan Press. She has published poems in such magazines as North American Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, Poetry Salzburg and has won prizes and honors for poems and two of her books. Her early poetry has been cited in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature.

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Helene Pilibosian: SEASONAL DUST

Clipping spearmint and grape leaves
of a conscious green,

soil dripping from my fingers
in fingerprints,

the pith of the ritual of
Armenian women

preserving the leaves
like old customs,

the frail stems
a planthood

cast like the pattern
of puns in a letter,

washing my hands of green
and my mind of pollen,

seasonal dust
for my conscience

sup the trees
that try to sleep,

washing my eyes of summer
and wiping them

with a towel
but not apology,

pouring tea made
from such dried conversations.


This poem has appeared in the prize-winning book At Quarter Past Reality

Helene Pilibosian: HISTORY'S TWISTS

1
Spirit climbs
where rhymes chime bold.
The bells of diction.
The rills of sound.
The goddess Anahit grew
in pagan beauty bounds.
With a gold bracelet
and an Armenian coin,
I dreamed reams of time
and climbed the Roman fence
like the adventurous vine
to the ancient Antioch yard.
A rooster crowed on an ancient day
near a mountain that sang praise
in the minor key.
It was the Asian symphony
with soldiers rollicking
in their nights of Bacchus.

The walls of empire were strong
but as legions went along they cracked.
Bits of mosaic that had tiled the floors
of the baths became artifacts.
Armenians grew the grapes
as that throne rose,
rams locking horns in habitual battle.
Armenians were lost,
but hung onto some Roman whims
like designs of rams and peacocks
in their embroidery,
like the rooster on the mountain
and the handsome profiles
of Roman men and women.

2
Armenians commanded
kings and property.
There were dynasties,
one after another, that entered
into the total mentality.
Give me a primer or a tale,
that of Tigran ruling for unity of states,
that of Queen Satenig with silk and gold thread.
Royalty in the clothes is also in the head.
It was then dead after the cymbal clash
lost its willing dash.
Impotent candles roamed the palaces.
Manuscripts found their thrones.
Puffs of incense rose.
Give me a primer showing
soldier Vartan freeing the cross
from the Persian deity.
Then there was Byzantine fealty.
Celebrations breed celebrations.
Celebrations seed us.

3
The Euphrates was near with ideas,
its belly having been swollen
with domination for so long it burst.
Centuries were the sanctuary
from which even the Church
took its inspiration in songs of the mass
that oozed a sweet sadness.
The Turkish sword or empire.
The Soviet Union hammer.
Yet landscapes were still
on perpetual loan for art.
Presidents adjusted the manners
of kings and czars.
The soothing hand of banners
was on their brows.

My heritage was born
out of the ice of these rivers
as God washed time with fine soap
and made it leather boots
for stepping in mud
and climbing through snow.
The tryst of the old
rhymes with people who were cold.
The beat of the new
rhymes with what to do.

The immortal grapevine
bears the leaves that wrap our lives,
the taste of tradition
preparing grapes for wine,
the fame of Armenian cognac
and of recovery in time.

From the book History's Twists: The Armenians by Helene Pilibosian, copyright 2007, honorable mention from Writer's Digest Book Awards.







Helene Pilibosian was born in Boston, MA, and lives in Watertown, MA. She attended Harvard University from which she received a degree in the humanities. After working as an editor at The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, she now heads Ohan Press, a private bilingual micropress.
Her poems have appeared in such magazines as The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, The Hollins Critic, North American Review, Seattle Review, Ellipsis and Weber: The Contemporary West and in many anthologies. She has published the books Carvings from an Heirloom: Oral History Poems, At Quarter Past Reality: New and Selected Poems and History’s Twists: The Armenians. Her early work has been cited in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature.

[HELENE PILIBOSIAN's latest book, History's Twists, won honorable mention in the Writer's Digest 16th Annual International Poetry Competition. - LK]

An Armenian Athena at the Loom (Book review by Grady Harp)

History’s Twists: The Armenians by Helene Pilibosian, Ohan Press, 171 Maplewood St. Watertown, MA 02472-1324, 2008, 96 pp., $18 postpaid.

Helene Pilibosian is a unique, fine poet, a woman overflowing with her Armenian heritage which she celebrates throughout this book of poems, weaving the ancient history, the not so distant history of the early 1900s and the current reflections of the many transplanted Armenians who have settled in many countries after the Diaspora that followed the 1915 horror on her colorful and richly detailed loom. She has a profound respect and understanding of the place of Armenia in world history and for those readers whose knowledge of that country's changing geography and relationship to the great kingdoms and conquerors, Pilibosian has a technique that allows entry into this under-appreciated past.

But what makes Pilibosian's poetry most interesting and seductive is her interlacing the immigrant experience with the voices of 'those who stayed behind'. Some of these poems, written in a narrative style with a refreshing respect for language as it describes and plays with itself in rhyme, address contemporary issues peculiar to Armenians while others step into the universal arena, a space enlightened by a mind whose focus and devotion has been honed by a respect for roots.

We are never quite sure how many of Helene Pilibosian's characters are real and how many are convenient creations for poetic dialogue. She can be very first person personal: 'I spilled my American hopes/of many afternoons/on the pavements that wore my life./An Armenian daughter doesn't forget/the name that gets her born,/ the long curls that were shorn.' She can be a resource for history: 'Oral history is a vagrant goat...Orphans were necessary for survival./ America and Europe were the pills....Remembrance is the epitaph/for ghosts of humble glory.'

She pays homage to some of the great Armenian artists as in 'Letter to Khachaturian on his 100th Birthday, 2003', to painter Arshile Gorky, Mihran Manoukian, Aivazovsky and others. But for this reader she is most effective in her longer, rapturously beautiful poem 'Letter to Nazeli', an exchange of thoughts and feelings between one who stayed in the homeland and one whose physical presence is in a foreign Gilead.

Doubtless with the publication of this book Helene Pilibosian's importance as a contemporary poet will be more widely recognized. She deserves her special place in the pantheon of humanistic artists.

(Grady Harp is a retired surgeon, poet, art buff and prized reviewer for amazon.com where this review was originally posted.)

Helene Pilibosian: Dialog

Friend,
you repeat yourself
as if you are haunted
by a voice
that bows
only to its past.

Yes,
my ancestors
often whisper
meanings to me,
but I seldom
listen.



This poem has appeared in Ararat, Winter 1985, 25th Anniversary volume.

Helene Pilibosian from "With the Bait of Bread"

Click the link to hear With the Bait of Bread read by Lola Koundakjian.

Child, you were and
you learned to be.
For a while, Armenian was
a wish you could not fathom.
It is still a sea
and we fish in it for food
with the bait of forgotten bread.
The moon will be less specific
with the sun and the tides
if you wish it, Child.

You are yeast scattered upon
the ground and the rising dough
will grow into tomorrow.
You are the yeast of
your friends in one language
or another.
If not already, Armenian will
ring in one of your ears someday.


Copyright Helene Pilibosian

This poem was also published in Ararat Quarterly and in the Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, 1981. Reprinted here by kind permission of the author.

Helene Pilibosian: EARTHQUAKE MONUMENT

They ask me to be involved.
I send 50 blankets,
100 bars of unscented soap
and 1000 pencils for schoolchildren.
I can’t send my shock.
They ask me to shed tears.
My river overflows.
My dry eyes sigh.
My morning juice sours.
I see double sometimes.
They ask me to spread the word.
I type too fast.
My images are pasted on the past.
My daily trek is vexed.
Memory still consults my mind.
They want a monument.
Spitak and Gumri are still floss
on the mill of no response.
I hew names on the marble of thoughts.
This is too heavy to send.
They wish remembrance.
I name my poems for them.
I light 50,000 beeswax candles
in the church of national history.
My ideas are edged with commemoration.
They say I should listen.
The announcer of 1988 gave the news
loud enough for a century
of survivors and sympathizers.
I heard and continue to understand.

Time to turn from nature's mannerism, remembering earth is not an enemy; to recommend soil that gobbles seeds and gratifies us with plants; to plant our reprimands and gather the green of their leaves;
to suspend negative moments like dangling participles in a sentence;
to repair the crafts that need new glue, even flour mixed with water;
to repair ourselves and the twitch of face that happens after dearth;
to fill the lanterns outside ourselves with light and craved raves of esteem.


Copyright Helene Pilibosian
This poem appears by kind permission of its author.


Helene Pilibosian's work has recently appeared in such magazines as The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, The Hollins Critic, North American Review, Seattle Review and is pending in Art Times. Some of her poems have won prizes or finalist status in competitions such as New Letters and Madison Review. She published her first book, Carvings from an Heirloom: Oral History Poems, in 1983, and the second, At Quarter Past Reality: New and Selected Poems, in 1998 under the imprint Ohan Press. The latter won an award from Writer’s Digest. Formerly she worked in journalism and editing at The Armenian Mirror-Spectator; now she is head of Ohan Press, a private bilingual micropress which has published seven books. The web site is at http://home.comcast.net/~hsarkiss.

Helene Pilibosian: Souvenir

Click to hear Souvenir read by Lola Koundakjian.

Did you bring me
a handful of soil from the homeland,
forgetting that it's earth
from the same planet as the American,
not Venus nor Mars
nor Saturn but only
dark soil with its own minerals--
the old kings and queens
still melting out memories
like party favors,
the sisters directing
the roundness of eternal bread,
the brothers coaxing the seeds
with unlearned plow and buffalo,
the merchants mingling
with magnificent ships?
Did you bring me
a hint of the breeze
that teased your hair
as no other breeze would dare
or the stares of the mountain paths
the Armenian aura
outlined with such clarity?
Did you bring me
that little bit of love
that boiled down from cooking
over the stove of history
in the clay pot of living?
Did you bring me the day
that sports debates of employment
and whistle-wails of work
or the night which highlights
an owl's or cat's eyes
prowling as animal rights,
their definition of the word
influenced by the heard,
the seen, the void, the tried?

The amber necklace you brought
reveals these passions congealed.


Copyright 2004 Helene Pilibosian

--
Helene Pilibosian is the author of two collections of poetry: Carvings
From an Heirloom and At Quarter Past Reality (a prizewinner) and has
many poems published in American literary journals such as the North
American Review, Willow Review and The Cape Rock. She is the owner of
Ohan Press whose bilingual website is at http://home.comcast.net/~hsarkiss