Poems (1945-1971) [Paperback]

Poems (1945–1971), first published in 1978 and now in its eighth edition in Greece, contains work from the nine volumes Miltos Sachtouris wrote during the most productive period of his poetic career. The first of these volumes was written during the Axis occupation of Greece, and the last was published thirty years later during the military junta of 1967–74. Part poetic auto- biography, part historical document, this collection thus chronicles one writer’s reaction to three decades of intense social and political upheaval in a nation experiencing the successive horrors of occupation, civil war, and military dictatorship. Evocative and deeply moving, Sachtouris’s poetry builds up, block by linguistic block, an unforgettable vision that speaks even to those who inhabit worlds different and distant from his own.Karen Emmerich’s poignant, eloquent versions of Sachtouris reveal not only the disturbing intensity of the original but also a remarkable diction and poetic pacing of her own. —Harold Bloom

I would say, ‘Cut these poems and they’ll bleed,’ but they are already bleeding – a poet’s evidence of world and civil wars, a military junta and dictatorship. We might call these the poem’s noir, in which the poet manages to fashion a bloody and beau- tiful reflection of strange times. In this important translation, each poem is a house made of flesh, and we wander stunned by all that can happen in words. —Eleni Sikelianos

As Karen Emmerich suggests in her judicious postscript to this fine translation of an important – if inadequately acknowledged – Greek poet, Miltos Sachtouris’s rather nightmarish view of the world emerges from his response to a cruel contem- porary history and his need to evoke its hidden reality. In volume after volume, l3*