“Ithaka” is Constantine Cavafy’s best-known poem, having won him his first international acclaim when T. S. Eliot published a translation of it in The Criterion in 1924. One of the few “second-person” poems Cavafy wrote (along with “The City” in… Read More ›
Late antiquity and the Hellenistic era were two of Constantine Cavafy’s favorite historical periods, and he set a considerable number of his poems in them. Situated sometime during the first three centuries of Christianity, In the Month of Athyr (Εν… Read More ›
Instinct My body is a mystery. As long as the fragile lives you shall feel its power. I shall save the world. Therefore Eros’ blood runs in my lips and Eros’ gold in my tired locks. I need only to… Read More ›
First published in A Large Number (Wielka liczba) in 1976, Wisława Szymborska’s In Praise of Self-Deprecation has been translated by many poets and has even been given slightly different titles, including In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself. It is… Read More ›
I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders and I will not kill with reason the mysteries I meet along my way in flowers, eyes, lips, and graves. The light… Read More ›
Buddhadeva Bose’s poetry is characterized by pointed images and a visibly meticulous arrangement of words and lines. What shines through most of Bose’s poems is not spontaneity or even literary pleasure, but the workings of a critical mind. The pleasure… Read More ›
“Hiccup” (“Hoquet”), like “Bargain”, is from Damas’s first collection, Pigments (1937). It reveals the inferiority complex felt by blacks of Africa and the Caribbean because of centuries of abuse and exploitation by white European colonials. The solution to this problem… Read More ›
Nima Yushij’s poem Hey, People (Ay Adamha) has been much anthologized in the years following its 1941 publication, often in support of leftist ideologies. The poem was written during the productive period when Nima (the name commonly used) worked for… Read More ›
The charms of shopping have never been more celebrated than in this most delicate and intriguing poem about mutual and tacit recognition. He Was Asking about the Quality— (Πὠτoυσε για την πoιóτητα—) elaborates on a moment of successful intersubjective gaze… Read More ›
Published in his first collection Morgue and Other Poems, “Happy Youth” (“Schöne Jugend,” also translated as “Beautiful Youth”) lyrically captures the world of disease and death that the young doctor Benn confronted daily while treating the poor and suffering in… Read More ›
First published in the slim volume …Cyprus, Where It Was Ordained for Me…, Engomi is considered one of George Seferis’s most characteristic poems. It is a free-verse ode in five uneven-length stanzas, the last one of which contains two lines… Read More ›