If language is the primal experience of mankind, then absurdity is the tease that always surprises us as a glittering determinant of meaning. In his new book, Opera Bufa, Manolis uses the poetic logic of the absurd as a literary device to entice us into multilayered images that flame through the margins of his thoughts. On the one hand it is quite possible to misinterpret the swirls of absurdity as an encroaching cruel intelligence, or paradoxical nonsense or even the desultory whim of one's conscience point of view–and that would indeed be true if absurdity were constellated as a disorder and had no obvious attachment other than its sound. But on the other hand, when absurdity is used in congruence with evaluations and appraisal that spark insight, then something extraordinary happens; meaning is highlighted and enshrined in the stylistic spectrum that examines its bridal bed.– The craning of the head, the choke and wheeze of life that is our burden, the mirror's eyes give form and weight to our inertia, they all merge and gallop like apostrophes back towards the solitary cry of the human spirit, swirling and transformed every time Manolis picks up his pen. With Fellini-like attention to detail and fascination, he 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, the implication in this collection is a resounding yes... and it seems to rise out of the layered shadows below endless olive groves like a divine sigh.

Manolis (Emmanuel Aligizakis) was born in the small village Kolibari west of Chania on the Greek island of Crete in 1947. At a young age his family moved first to Thessaloniki and then to Athens where he was educated, achieving a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Sciences at the Panteion University of Athens. He served in the armed forces for two years, and emigrated to Vancouver in 1973, where he worked in several different jobs over the years. He attended Simon Fraser University for a year, taking English Literature in a non-degree program. He has written three novels and a large number of collections of poetry, which are slowly appearing as published works. Various articles, poems and short stories in Greek as well as in English have appeared in various magazines and newspapers in Canada, United States, Australia and Greece. After working as an iron worker, train labourer, taxi driver and stock broker, he now lives in White Rock where he spends his time writing, gardening and traveling. In 2006 he founded Libros Libertad, an unorthodox and independent publishing company in Surrey, BC with the goal of publishing literary books.

Manolis Aligizakis' profile page

Manolis, publisher and poet, has created a mock epic of oceanic dimensions. Absurd, insightful, comic and profound the poems of Opera Bufa combine eroticism and spirituality, responsibility and the acknowledgement of the human condition, as if Aristophanes and Seferis sat down to collaborate on a grand work together. The deep ground of Manolis' poetry is an ancient music that is the source of all great poetry, and within the context of these poems the shade of Anacreon and Neruda is ever present. Opera Bufa is incandescent flashing sparks of poetic energy that linger long after the book is put down, a deepening resonance. The narrative thread of the poems offers us compassion and ecstatic wonder, alert to the injustice of the world. The bawdy and the sublime are infused with limitless desire bursting out of the quotidian world of politics and the commonplace. At the core of these poems lies the problem of evil and the injustice of mankind to his own kind, in passionate poems where realism shines with mystery and imaginative light. Combining a baroque sensibility with a flair for surrealism, Opera Bufa is a transcendent and illuminous work, as the poems rise from the beginning to a great crescendo in an operatic chorus. A delight to read, these poems, filled with rage and passionate desire, offer an unforgettable experience and a major contribution to our literature.

Richard Olafson, author of Cloud on my Tongue