C. P. Cavafy

Book excerpt: The acclaimed translation of the most important modern Greek poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) is the most important figure in twentieth-century Greek poetry, and his poems are considered among the most powerful in modern European literature. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard’s celebrated English translation of Cavafy’s collected poems captures the poet’s mixture of formal and idiomatic language, the immediacy of his frank treatment of homoeroticism, his brilliant re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies. This English-only volume is a classic of modern poetry.