Rumor

by Silva Zanoyan Merjanian

Silva's poetry rewards the reader with the gift of exquisite lacework, adorned with choice words and skillfully wrought poetic imagery, which allow you to get a glimpse of both the intoxicating sensuality of survival and the scalpel scars on the tender skin of life. Many-layered, it excels alike in depicting the sphere of personal experience and of traumatic social issues. - Dr. Aprilia Zank. Lecturer for Creative Writing and Translation Theory Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany

116 pages, Unknown Binding

First published March 30, 2015

About the author

Silva Zanoyan Merjanian is a widely published poet who grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. She moved to Geneva during the Lebanese civil war after personally experiencing the devastation of her beloved country. She later settled in California to raise her two sons with her husband. Her poetry reflects a little of what she took with her from each city she lived in. The nostalgia for her roots, her Armenian heritage, her deep sense of humanity reduced and elevated at the same time in life’s events, permeate through her poems. Her work is widely featured in anthologies and international poetry journals and read by Irish actress/narrator Eabha Rose. She has two volumes of poetry, Uncoil a Night 2013 and recently published Rumor 2015. Proceeds from both books are entirely donated to refugees and more recently to Mer Doon Inc, an organization housing young girls straight out of orphanages to give them a better and safer chance at life. Merjanian was the guest speaker at Ohio State University on the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. She’s also been invited to read in poetry festivals and poetry societies.

Rumor has been awarded with Best Poetry Book Fall 2015 by NABE, and 3 poems from Rumor are Pushcart nominated.


http://armenianweekly.com/2015/08/18/...

http://asbarez.com/138279/poet-silva-...

Reviews

[Helene Cardona · Rating 5 out of 5]

“tonight poets will find the words to color their hell
and dip their pens in wounds that aren’t even theirs”
~From “Tonight”

Silva Zanoyan Merjanian’s new collection RUMOR will deeply move you. Her beautifully crafted, powerful poems take the reader on a lyrical journey spanning several continents, from the roots of her Armenian heritage to Beirut, then Switzerland, and finally the US.
The stunning cover is by Armenian painter Suren Vosganian.


Beirut

Over there
all that happened
(and didn’t happen)
folded
packed in mental mothballs
stories fading with creases
some reduced and softer versions

wonder why I preserve breaths
forced through my lungs in those days
stringed around the eye of a hurricane
circling, demonic, nameless
shaking me shameless for a day

on nights when a collective sigh stings
and I can’t tell
which tale will toll for me
and which nocturnal howl
will lift the dust
through endless times
relive slivers
on a pink tip of my tongue
afraid to bite a dreamt memory
that it might hemorrhage
bleed the night

I want a dripping whiff of that afternoon coffee
instinctively bitter, solemnity and hot
ten minutes when lonely hearts
willed an arching cease fire
and time hovered upon us
long enough for my mother
to build castles in my cup

over there
the man flying his doves
on the roof across two streets
remains a blur
but the doves stirring the air
in perfect shades of unison
(I had named them after heroes long forgot)
sometimes still raise dust in my room
of their feathers’ aches and plight

I believed then
I could break away
would break away

I did one day
but the doves were left to die

over there
at dusk my father played the mandolin
and my mother’s voice filled all the gaps
between our breaths –
the dam that held surpluses of war
long enough for us to shed in dreams

why do I long for hell
on nights
when I can’t sieve my sigh from the wind’s eye
and I wonder if I really ever broke away
from a circle named dead doves
perhaps
scent of jasmine
still smells like home
back home in the rain

From RUMOR, by Silva Zanoyan Merjanian

To date all proceeds from these books were donated to the Syrian Armenian Relief Fund. Starting from July 2016 all proceeds will be donated to Mer Doon (Our House.)

Mer Doon’s mission is to help orphaned and disadvantaged young women in Armenia break the cycle of dependency by providing education, job training, and a loving, family environment instilling leadership skills and teaching self-sufficiency. Mer Doon is a non-political and non-governmental organization and does not have any religious affiliations.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

You cannot walk away from reading a poem written by Silva Zanoyan Merjanian with out a shift in your thinking, perhaps a sigh leaving your lips or a hastening of pulse.

Her poems touch humanity by their focus on not only what lifts and elevates the spirit, such as her poem, "Spring" or her love poems such as "Hesitation" but they also zero in on scars inflicted to the innocent. Her poems from the war-zone of Lebanon are palpable and wounding; they depict the trauma of lost lives and dreams, written as only a survivor can attest.


Well-written with fresh and unique imagery and exceptional insight, "Rumor" is a book to read more than once, linger over and ponder.

*All sales from this book are donated to the Syrian Armenian Relief Fund.

[Kalpna Singh-Chitnis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pure nostalgia! Every poem is like a fresh flower or an open wound. Love, loss, lust and quest to find the dignity of human values are the main themes. Life explores itself in the words of Silva Zanoyan Merjanan and becomes a Rumor.

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silva's poetry is kneaded with passion and tragedy alike, her Mediterranean years in Lebanon, her Armenian Heritage and her American present life all shape her poems, like three rivers flowing into the same ocean, there is war with all its ugliness in her poems, the genocide of the Armenians, death and ruins of a city..Beirut, with its painfully dark years of civil war and the Israeli invasion that she personally experienced.. exile, love, refugees, music, jasmine scented memories, all delicately, skillfully and intricately woven in a wounding, rich, lyrical, solid language adorned with the most sensual imagery.

I've been reading Silva's poetry for about 3 years now, I listened to some poems read by another artist friend who brought them alive, I memorised many passages by heart..I proudly consider her a mentor and a teacher..

Rumor is not a book to read once, it is a book to dwell in, to re read with the same first impression and amazement, touching and unique, a truly unforgettable and rewarding poetic experience.


this is a poem I'm never tired of reading..something we both love.."rooftops"


Rooftop

I die at dusk every day
on a rooftop in a city with no name
daughters unborn to me mourn
in bruised nights' wombs
voices I do not recognize
utter prayers to deaf trees
shaking my limbs off their trees

a city breathing heavy with its sins
buries me in its alleys
smell of jasmine and urine on its walls
where I once cut a vein and emptied
time's venomm under blinking neon lights

there's no distance to my pain

I'm born at dawn everyday
in a sac of daylight
with an apetite to eat moments in slow bites
roll them on a dry tongue
linger on the sweet and bitter
oozing from each tik tock shortening my life

I can't remember where I loved you in between

it is dusk again
I look for the rooftop
I hung my fresh laundrey on