Abyss and Song

George Sarantaris

The first English-language collection of Greek Modernist George Sarantaris, described by Nobel Laureate Odysseus Elytis as “the greatest poet of the Generation of ’30,” whose laconic lyric poetry oscillates between the philosophical and the erotic. Sarantaris’ lucid poems, with their epigrammatic simplicity, recall the ancient Greek poetic tradition while drawing on the French and Italian influences of his time. Louka’s translation conveys the freshness of Sarantaris’s aphoristic style, metaphorical wit, and philosophical musings. In their condensed precision and attention to landscape, Sarantaris’s poems may remind English-language readers of his American contemporary Lorine Niedecker and others in the Objectivist circle.

'In his brief lifetime, Sarantaris produced poems of exceptional force and beauty. These are verses that ache, that unsettle, that thrum with vitality and precision. Pria Louka, in her graceful, finely-wrought translations, has reproduced the essential purity and interiority of Sarantaris' poems, the same ambiguity and lightness of touch. I will treasure this bilingual volume, and I will urge it upon lovers of poetry everywhere.' – Jhumpa Lahiri