A review by quiver
Selected Poems by Nikos Stangos, Yiannis Ritsos

4.0

Ritsos’ poems speak intimately, as dreams. As in our dreams, here, too, one is a spectator. Much in his poetry speaks of the ordinary, the prosaic: thus, the two—the dream, the prosaic—are merged. There is also a strain, a tension: a shadow of war, politics, death, poverty, prison. A shadow, and not the thing. Ritsos shows rather than tells, and this means we must read patiently and kindly, in order to see the word behind the word. His poems seem to me as a kind of inventory. A reminder that the ordinary, which encompasses our lives, is mythical, and luminous with meaning.