The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy A New Translation [Paperback]

C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) has written some of the most powerful poems in history. His work uncannily translates history, the record of the many, into an individual personal document. Though Cavafy is wickedly satirical, many of his poems are located in a landscape of intimacy. Drawing on the spectrum of ancient Greek poetic tradition, his poetry is still internal, whether his speaker is a spoiled rich boy who plans to enter politics or a poor, ostracized, pure and beautiful young man destroyed by poverty and priggish social mores.Cavafys simplicity, learning, pleasure in sex, tranquility in exile, have healed our anguish for over a century. . . . Cavafys deeply cultured melancholy and praise of learning and the body flow unimpeded in Barnstones translations.How to capture a mind that roams both the Alexandrian streets outside his door and the god-haunted alleys of the Panhellenic past? I would venture to say that only a gifted poet could accomplish that task, and in Aliki Barnstone we have found that poet.A new translation of a poet widely considered one of the most important of the twentieth century.