Perhaps Greece's most important poet, Yannis Ritsos follows such eminent predecessors as Cavafy, Sikelianos, and Seferis in the dramatic and symbolic expression of a tragic sense of life. The three volumes of Ritsos's poetry translated here--Parentheses, 1946-47, Parentheses, 1950-61, and The Distant, 1975--represent a thirty year poetic journey and a developing sensibility that link the poet's subtler perceptions at different moments of his maturity.
In his introduction to the poems, and as an explanation of the book's title, Edmund Keeley writes: "The two signs of the...
Perhaps Greece's most important poet, Yannis Ritsos follows such eminent predecessors as Cavafy, Sikelianos, and Seferis in the dramatic and symbol...