[Yannis Ritsos]. Yannis Ritsos Among His Contemporaries: Twentieth-Century Greek Poetry. Translated by Marjorie Chambers. London: Colenso Books, 2018. xvii, 233 p.

ISBN 9780992863296

A selection of Ritsos’ poetry, and smaller selections of poems by George Vafopoulos, Nikos Gatsos, Nikiforos Vrettakos, Miltos Sachtouris and Yannis Kondos.

Contents:

Introduction (pp. ix-xvii).

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990): My Sister’s Song (1937) (pp. 3-26); The March of the Ocean (1940) (pp. 27-56); The Moonlight Sonata (1956) (pp. 57-64); Farewell (1957) (pp. 65-78); The Prison Tree and the Women (1963) (pp. 79-85); from Twelve Poems on Cavafy (1963): “The Poet’s Room” (p. 87); from The Fourth Dimension (1972): “Ajax” (pp. 89-99); Love Poems (1981): “You’ve come back from the market...” (p. 101); “Erotic sleep after love...” (p. 101); “Your body on the beach...” (p. 102); “Therefore I turn the stone...” (p. 102); “The sunset gleamed...” (p. 103); “You threw off the sheet...” (p. 103); “A large rose climbs companionless...” (p. 104); “Put your bare foot on the paper...” (p. 104). From Responses (1987): “The Blood” (p. 105); “He with the Hat” (p. 105); “Fishing Village” (p. 106); “Sudden Charge” (p. 106); “Justification” (p. 107); “One Night” (p. 107); “Consolatory” (p. 108); “Musical Substitute” (p. 108); “These” (p. 109); “The Hour of Waiting” (p. 109).

George Vafopoulos (1903-1996): from The Offering (1938): “The Calendar” (pp. 113-114); from Songs of Resurrection (1948): “Thou in Me” (pp. 115-118); from The Big Night and the Window (1959): “Scales” (p. 119); “The Hedgehog” (p. 120); “Fear” (p. 121); from The Sequel (1977): “First Symphony in Red and White” (pp. 123-124).

Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992): Amorgos (1943) (pp. 127-133). From Lend Silken Threads to the Wind (1994): “Spanish Rhapsody” (pp. 135-136); “Take Your Ring” (pp. 137-138); “Orange Tree of Aegina” (pp. 139-140); “A Summer Night” (pp. 140-141).

Nikiforos Vrettakos (1912-1991): from Gifts in Abeyance (1986): “Euphoria” (p. 145); “Whatever Happens” (p. 145); “Short Ode” (p. 146); “Tree Planting” (p. 146); “The Greek Language” (p. 146); “The Field of Words” (p. 147); “The Ten Commandments” (p. 147); “The Eyes of Insects” (p. 148); “The Tulip” (p. 148); “The Decay of Hands” (p. 148); “Memory of Lost Blood” (p. 149); “Out of Superfluity” (p. 149). From Chorus (1988): “The Cloud” (p. 151); “Fourteen Poems for the Same Mountain” (pp. 151-157); “Creation” (p. 157); “The Workshop” (p. 157); “Poetry” (p. 158); “Epigram of Life” (p. 158); “Chorus” (p. 158); “Neither” (p. 159); “Pascal Exaltation” (p. 159).

Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2005): from The Forgotten Woman (1945): “The Dream” (pp. 163-164); “Beauty” (p. 164); “The Three Lovers” (p. 165). From Ballads (1948): “The Dead Man in Our Lives Ioannis Veniamin d’Arkozi” (p. 167); “Observatory” (p. 168); “The Nightmare” (p. 169); “The Gifts” (p. 170); “Deep Mine” (p. 171); “The Sky” (p. 172); “Sometimes the Women” (p. 173); “It Isn’t Oedipus” (p. 174). From With Face to the Wall (1952): “On the Nature of the Beast” (p. 175); “Experiments for the Repetition of Night” (p. 176); “The Scene” (p. 177); “Nostalgia Returns” (p. 178); “The Telephone” (p. 179); “The Carnival” (p. 180); “Metamorphosis” (p. 181).

Yannis Kondos (1943-1996): from At the Coming of Day (1992): “An End to Journeys” (p. 185); “Twenty-four-hour News” (p. 186); “Mistaken Identities” (p. 187); “The Anatomist” (p. 188); “The Traveller with the Black Box” (p. 189). From The Nothing Athlete (1997): “It Could Be a Bergman Film” (p. 191); “Bronze Age” (p. 192); “Absentminded with Love or What Does Emily Dickinson Want of Us?” (p. 193); “Pedagogics” (p. 194); “Rural Country” (p. 195); “For Schoolfellows” (p. 196); “What Became of Charles Dickens’s Children” (p. 196).

Marjorie Chambers, ‘Three Essays on Ritsos’: “Ritsos and Greek Mythology” (1992) (pp. 201-216); “Ritsos in Belfast” (1997) (pp. 217-221); “Ritsos in Dublin” (2017) (pp. 223-225).

Index of Titles and First Lines (pp. 227-233).