The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias (The Modern Greek Literature Library)

by Nikos Kavadias, Gail Holst-Warhaft (Translator), Νίκος Καββαδίας

Bilingual edition. English translation and Greek original in opposite pages.

Modern Greeks dominate the world's merchant marine; ancient Greeks like Homer's Odysseus sailed the Mediterranean and beyond. But what do we know about shipboard life? Not much. Reading Kavadias fills this emptiness. He spent his adult life sailing world-wide and writing poems about monsoons, cats dying on shipboard, masts snapping in two, dream-girls or disgusting whores on shore, and fleas jumping off one's pubic hair. "In this fo'c'sle," he laments, "I ruined my calm self / and killed my tender childhood soul. / But I never gave up my obstinate dream, / and the sea, when it roars, tells me a lot." Scrupulously translated, these accessible poems will tell landlubbers a lot about life on the winedark sea.
-Peter Bien, Translator of Nikos Kazantzakis and Stratis Myrivilis

Genres: Poetry

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1987

Reviews

[Ioanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

actually the original poems are great, the English translations are baaaaaaad

[Marios Antoniou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kavadias is not well known outside Greece, compared to other Greek poets such as Cavafy and Seferis but he certainly deserves to be. This poetry collection, translated in English is an opprortunity to become acquinted with his poems which deal with life aboard the ship, exotic voyages as well as masterpieces such as 'Federico Garcia Lorca' which contain political messages against tyranny

[Dimitris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it in the greek original, but could not find it here.