An Essay on the Structure of the Human Imaginative

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excerpt

Regardless of how events actually unfolded in the sanctuary of
Delphi, it is certain that this solar cult of Apollo had an immense
influence on the formation of the Greek poietic Imaginative. In this
respect, Nietzsche’s study of the problem has remained definitive
down to the present day.
On the other hand, returning to the thread of our discussion,
scholars of the stature of Murray or Bowra consider that the socalled
Homeric religion was by no means a religion in the proper
sense, since the true religious belief of the Greeks prior to the 4th
century BCE has nothing in common with the luminous forms of
Olympus. Thus, Bowra emphasises that the anthropomorphic aspect
of this system, developed by the Homeric individual Imaginative, has
no connection with the actual religion and morality of Greek society
of that time.
In this way, the view of those who claim that there existed a profoundly
anthropomorphic religion of the ancient Greeks–a position
with which we have already disagreed from the outset–proves to be
a profound error.
Likewise, taking into account the research of Dodds and others,
we shall attempt to remove another persistent prejudice concerning
the Greek religion and the Greek human being: namely, their supposed
extreme and exclusive rationality.
But what does the term anthropomorphism actually mean with
respect to the Greek poietic Imaginative in its representation of the
gods?
It does not mean, in any case, that the gods were conceived and
represented according to the image of human beings. On the contrary,
the situation is reversed: the vigor and freshness of the youthful
human body appeared as an image of divinity.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763890?th=1

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

“Gennadi is crazy about music. He wants to talk to you about American rock bands. Dmitri doesn’t like music. He likes nothing but his dinner—and his vodka.” The young men laughed loudly. “I like jazz music,” he went on switching easily to English. “May I ask you something most wonderful?”
“Yes, you may,” she said, laughing. She was prepared for the usual questions that, to date, all the Soviets had asked: Where did you learn Russian? Do you have children? Where do you work? How much do you earn? But Volodya surprised her. As they passed a stone bench, he stopped, sat down and pulled something from his pocket. The other two men came closer to see, smiling at Jennifer and suddenly shy. Volodya flipped open a wallet and pulled out a photograph.
“Look here. Do you know who that is?”
Jennifer took the photo and examined it. It had been clipped from a magazine and had obviously been folded and re-folded before finding its present home. The wide flat nose and plain features were unmistakable. “It’s Ella Fitzgerald, the jazz singer.”
“Yes, yes, Ella Feetzgerald.” Volodya sucked in his breath dramatically. “Some day I will go to America and meet Ella Feetzgerald.”
“Why her?” Jennifer asked. “Do you like her music?”
“Yes, I am jazz musician. Of course, I don’t play all the time. The great Soviet state in its glory has given me another profession.…”
Gennadi broke into the conversation after picking up the one word of interest—music. He looked Jennifer in the eyes and asked earnestly, “Maybe you can send me rock records when you return. Please, do you know any of these bands?” And he began to reel off names that he had memorized in English: Deep Purple, Blood Sweat and Tears, 1910 Fruitgum Company. Jennifer recognized them as pop groups and not her thing, but she promised to look into it.
Bored with this conversation, Volodya got up from his stone bench to walk again, and the little group immediately moved with him. Just as if they had not been interrupted, he began to tell her about how he made his living—though he dismissed the employment as contemptible. He had once worked for Intourist, he said proudly, spoke English and Japanese fluently, and had spent two years during the height of the cold war escorting elderly American tourists, handing out badly written pamphlets praising Lenin and explaining how communism had helped build art galleries and museums.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246?th=1

Orange

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At the Restaurant
You walked by me
sweet breeze of flowing hair
light scent of your aroma
bounced between our eyes
that met midway; you saw me
clinking to my mate
before I tasted my wine and
wanting to claim part
of that charm, you crossed
your legs almost indifferently
under the table to reveal the line
that controls the eyes of men
I smiled absentmindedly
towards you and
you pretended you didn’t
notice, though almost innocently
you played the game of Eros and
when the nightmare
will wake you up
you’ll take a deep breath and
smiling, you will think:
‘I provoked the glance
of that middle-aged man’s
didn’t I?’

https://draft2digital.com/book/3746001#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763750?th=1

Kariotakis-Polydouri: The Tragic Love Story

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Evening
The children who play in the spring dusk
far away echo —
the breeze whispers and remains
in the lips of the rose petals
the open windows that breathe the hour
my vacant room —
a train coming from a foreign land
my vanished dreams
chime of bells that fades, evening that descends
onto the city —
onto the faces of people, into the mirror of the sky
in all my life right now.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562951

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763459?th=1

Miltos Sachtouris – Collected Poems

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VI
The neglected is the crucified soldier
the neglected one is the clock that stopped
the neglected one is the little branch that caught fire
the neglected one is the needle that broke
the neglected one is the bloomed Epitaphios
the neglected one is the hand which aimed
the neglected one is the wound that shivered
the neglected one is the kiss that got sick
the neglected one is the knife that missed its target
the neglected one is the mud which dried
the neglected one is the fever that went down

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763904?th=1

Triptych

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Store Window
You grasp the unthinkable
from the gap
behind your forehead or sunny
meadow and by inverting it
acquire some spasm of logic
unexpected for that place and point
the thought of my existence staring from
the store window and discovering
loneliness without the phantom of her
or something she relates to
your idol craves some discussion
as the unthinkable turns to solid
unused space between your temples
and unspent wisdom to flashy glitter in the
glass of a grocery store window

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDNLNKXV?th=1

Antony Fostieris – Selected Poems, Review by AI

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Excerpt

Aligizakis’s English translation makes the book available as an extensive, chronological encounter, and many images retain memorable force: the ant’s winter seeds, the black words suspended from a ceiling, the gear glimpsed at the edge of vision. The translation also preserves the poems’ shifts between colloquial speech, philosophical reflection, biblical language, and abrupt surrealism. At points, however, English syntax feels stiff or opaque, and some collocations sound unusual enough to distract from the image. That texture can make the reader pause productively, but it can also blur whether a phrase’s strangeness is deliberate or translational. Without comparing the Greek originals, one cannot confidently assign those effects to either poet or translator. The introduction’s account of Fostieris’s rhythmic and linguistic range is useful, though its sweeping critical language is less persuasive than the poems themselves. The interview is more illuminating: Fostieris describes translation and tradition as part of poetry’s shared language, and prefers chronological presentation because it shows motifs in their “metamorphoses.” The book’s sequence bears out that claim.        For English-language readers, this volume offers more than an introduction to a contemporary Greek poet; it offers a sustained encounter with a poetic intelligence that distrusts easy oppositions. Fostieris’s poems are not transparent meditations: they invite rereading, and their occasional obscurity belongs partly to a project that questions how words and concepts mediate experience. Yet their questions travel. What does memory preserve? Can thought touch the world without remaking it? What does poetry do with the knowledge that bodies and words decay? Across five decades, Fostieris answers not with doctrine but with images that keep changing their terms. This selection’s strongest achievement is to make that change visible. Its long voyage moves toward no final shore, but teaches the reader to notice the seconds, bodies, voices, and vanishing meanings encountered along the way.

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume II

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Holiday
Enclosed days naturally finished. Many lights, colourful
dresses and sometimes without dresses,
words remembered off by heart and true words,
thoughtful or not and silence that was sometimes spoken;
there weren’t only the lighted performances;
the sun and the trees and the naked body took part too
yet the end, even a temporary one, wasn’t unrealized.
The theatre was closed. Shadows walked slowly in front
of the big mirrors in the hallway, hanging masks,
lustful ghosts;
there wasn’t any person behind them, and
those masks vanished like the smoke of the last
cigarette
soon as the voice of the milkman was heard in the street
next morning and the steps of the cleaning lady
on the marble stairs.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1997266008?th=1

Swamped

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Excerpt

“A good friend at Yorkshire would like some of the primary
shares. What should I tell him?”
Eteo smiled and pulled her close.
“This is a hot issue, Frances. I can’t send any shares to Yorkshire,
but tell your buddy that anything he might be able to buy in the first
two weeks he better go in the market and buy. Even better, tell him
that I’m willing to cross a good size of stock to him on the first day,
so he’ll be positioned before the stock moves higher.”
“What do you expect after two weeks?”
“A higher price” he said laconically.
Frances gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Hot man, my hot guy,
we’ll see, yes, we’ll see,” she said as she turned to leave, moving her
beautiful behind lasciviously as she walked out of the office.
Robert O’Leary called Eteo a few minutes later to ask what had
happened with the Golden Veins drilling. Eteo told him they had lost
the well, which did not surprise Robert. The poor market had already
announced as much.
“You allocated some shares of Mario’s Nostra to my accounts?”
“Of course. Ten thousand for each of your two accounts.”
“I’d like some more, Are you tight with this one?”
“Big demand for the shares, Rob. I didn’t expect this, honestly.
Mario just sent twenty-five new accounts for the shareholder list,
a thousand shares each.”
“Okay … so cross me another twenty thousand out of your warrants.
You’ll cross them out as soon as it lists?”
“Yes, Mario wants them on the first trading session. I’ll give you
twenty out of those, okay?
“Good.”
By now Eteo’s day was almost over. He called Ariana and caught
her getting ready to visit her mother.
“I’m just on my way out,” she explained. “Are you done for
today?”
“Soon,” he replied. “Want to go for our walk when you’re done?
Call me, okay?”
“Yes, my love, later on.”
“Okay, love you.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562976

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX?th=1

Entropy – A Review by AI

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excerpt

The English translation carries that same balance of intensity and difficulty. Aligizakis gives the poems a clear, open page: the short lines and ample white space encourage the reader to pause, and the recurrent images remain easy to follow. Some formulations, however, sound awkward or opaque in English. At times the syntax and word choice make it difficult to know whether a phrase’s strangeness is intentional or a result of translation. The book does not print the Greek originals alongside the English, so readers cannot compare the two versions. This matters in poetry, where sound, rhythm and shades of meaning are part of the work, not incidental features. Still, the translation’s occasional friction can also suit a poet concerned with language that fails, changes or cannot fully carry an experience.

The substantial introduction traces Faitas’s career and interprets each collection, providing helpful context for readers unfamiliar with the poet. It also quotes many poems and explains their philosophical implications in advance. Some readers will appreciate this guide; others may find that it narrows the space for discovery. The poems often work best when encountered directly, before their imagery is translated into a single explanatory argument. The praise section and biographical notes add further context, though the book’s strongest case for Faitas remains the poems themselves.

Entropy will appeal most to readers drawn to philosophical lyric poetry, Greek myth, and sustained reflection on mortality and the cosmos. It is not a collection built around narrative momentum or sharply individualized dramatic voices. Its movement is cyclical: an image or question returns altered, as if the book’s own form were mimicking the rhythms it describes. That repetition can be immersive, sometimes excessive, but it also gives the collection its identity. Faitas writes from the conviction that a person is brief, knowledge incomplete and the universe beyond comprehension. Yet the poems continue to ask, to remember, to love and to make images out of what cannot be mastered. Their deepest subject may be not entropy as dissolution, but the human urge to find connection within it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPCRLJC6?th=1