Twelve Poems about Cavafy
Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) was one of most inimitable, prolific, and revered poets of the 20th century. Paul Merchant's translation of Twelve Poems about Cavafy first appeared in Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort's Modern Poetry in Translation series in 1968. Merchant's translation, newly revised for this edition, is complemented by a thoughtful afterword that tracks the roots of this poetic sequence and its journey from Greek to English.