Monochords by Yannis Ritsos and translated by Paul Merchant

This is poetry from Greece.

Monochords by Yannis Ritsos translated by Paul Merchant is published by Tavern Books. This is a Book originally written in Greek. This was published in 2017.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781935635703E12.

Monochords, by Yannis Ritsos and translated by Paul Merchant from Greek, brings Greek-language poetry from Greece into English through Ritsos’s radical compression, single-string music, and the austerity of one line asked to carry a whole world. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for string, breath, aphorism, and the discipline of saying almost nothing until it resonates, not as a fixed lesson about Greece. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Monochords belongs in the translated poetry library because it belongs as a major Greek poet’s lesson in lyric smallness and power.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.