I meant to include in my last message my thanks to Anny Ballardini for her
comments on my translation of Miltos Sachtouris's "The soldier poet," as
well as some further information about Sachtouris (the spelling in English
varies,) who is well known in Greece but neglected elsewhere. The Greek
text of "The Soldier Poet" was set to music as a popular song in the 1970's.
The difficulty of imagining a serious poem by a major contemporary poet
making the top 40 in the U.S. says a great deal about the relative extent to
which Greek and American poetry are integrated into their respective
national cultures.
Sachtouris is in my opinion one of the great poets of our time. Like
Baudelaire (a poet from whom in most ways he is utterly different,) his
technical range is narrow but so highly perfected that it is capable of
spectacular effects and unforgettable impact. Fortunately I don't need to
say more, since there is an excellent web site available with sample poems
in Greek and English and bibliography at:
http://greece.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/18231
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Jon Corelis [log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics
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