Monochords

Poetry. Translated from the Greek by Paul Merchant. Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) is one Greece's most prolific, distinguished and celebrated poets. He is the author of some 50 volumes of poetry. His Selected Poems 1938-1988 (1989) reflect that abundance as it contains 440 poems gathered from some 43 volumes. His MONOCHORDS written at about ten during 1979, can be read as miniature encapsulations by a master of the art of brevity Or they can be read as keys to his whole work, his lexicon of images and ideas. Ritsos, though a world reknown poet, is, unfortunately hardly known in the United States. Hopefully this translation of MONOCHORDS by Paul Merchant will help in spreading Ritsos1 poetry by offering toAmerican readers a 3sampler of the Greek poet1s work. Paul Merchant's translations of Ritsos, in his Greek issue of Modern Poetry in Translation (1968) and read by Ted Hughes on BBC radio in 1970, were among the first published in England. Merchant recently collaborated with Doug Erickson and Jeremy Skinner on a bibliography of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and on a reprint of a rare Expedition text. Since 1996 he has been Director of the William Stafford Archives.