Cavafy: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)

The Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863 1933) is a towering figure of twentieth-century literature. No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break, with such taut energy, the taboos of his time surrounding homoerotic desire.

In this edition, award-winning translator and editor Daniel Mendelsohn has made a selection of the poet s best-loved works, including such favorites as Waiting for the Barbarians, Ithaca, and The God Abandons Antony. Accompanied by Mendelsohn s explanatory notes, the poems collected here cover the vast sweep of Hellenic civilization, from the Trojan War through Cavafy s own lifetime. Whether advising Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the eve of his death, Cavafy s poems make the historic profoundly and movingly personal.