Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses by Yiannis Ritsos

Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses Reviews

• 
  Robert Beveridge

  Yannis Ritsos, Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses (Princeton, 1991)
  [originally posted 12Mar2001]
  
  Yannis Ritsos, one of the true elder statesmen of Greek poetry, never truly left adolescence (despite being over eighty at his death); he mixes ancient Greek myth and a kind of blissfully revelatory scurrilousness into a poetic soup that's alternately amusing and annoying. When he's on, his work resounds; when he's not, it has the feel of a horny thirteen-year-old typing with one hand. Odd, since one doesn't usually think of there being a fine line between the two.
  
  While there are pieces scattered throughout this one that make it worthwhile, much of those were also printed in the superior volume Exile and Return; this is probably better off in the collection of Ritsos completists. ***
• 
  thalia

  I wish I had a more commanding knowledge of Ancient Greek texts, less bc I think Ancient Greek texts are so interesting but more Bc Ritsos brilliantly Re renders these ancient stories and characters, giving new life to these usually exhausted myths, pushing the bounds of Greek literature and all poetry.
  
• 
  Clarice

  While not all of these poems struck me in a deep place, there were a few quite exceptional gems. "Women" broke my heart, and I find myself unable to stop picking up the book and rereading it.
• 
  l

  I read "Moonlight Sonata" and was enchanted. I'm not sure what I think of his poetry in these collections though...
  
  Doubtful Stature
  Pale, very pale; thorns in his hair-thorns
  down to his shoulders, to his waist, to the soles of his feet-
  maybe they were actually his wings; because just
  as I glanced a second time toward the door, there was nothing
  but the slightest smoke in place of the hammer.
  
  Insomnia
  This relentless repetition of the same illegible text-
  at the top of the sheet the rusted hole from the thumbtack,
  at the bottom two drops of black blood. The two-he said-the two,
  the double, the double sound, the double meaning. I'm tired of doors
  closed and open with the dead or women. Lefteris
  got going in a hurry before it started raining.
  Afterwards he came back with the damp blanket and the cap belonging to the one who was executed.
  
  Interesting.
• 
  Griffin Alexander

  The first two sections, "Repetitions" and "Testimonies" are a total snore heavy on classical Greek allusion. The last two, "Parentheses" and "The Distant" are where you find what you are looking for in Ritsos' work. Strange, surreal, and quotidian all at once. It is put succinctly by Ritsos in the first poem of "Parentheses":
  
  The Meaning of Simplicity
  
  I hide behind simple things so you'll find me;
  if you don't find me, you'll find the things,
  you'll touch what my hand has touched.
  our hand-prints will merge.
  
  The August moon glitters in the kitchen
  like a tin-plated pot (it gets that way because of what I'm saying to you),
  it lights up the empty house and the house's kneeling silence—
  always the silence remains kneeling.
  
  Every word is a doorway
  to a meeting, one often cancelled,
  and that's when a word is true: when it insists on the meeting.
• 
  J

  Afternoon
  
  The afternoon is all fallen plaster, black stones, dry thorns.
  The afternoon has a difficult color made up
  of old footsteps halted in mid-stride,
  of old jars buried in the courtyard, covered by fatigue and straw.
  
  Two killed, five killed, twelve -- so very many.
  Each hour has its killing.
  Behind the windows stand those who are missing,
  and the jug full of water they didn't drink.
  
  And that star that fell at the edge of evening
  is like the severed ear that doesn't hear the crickets,
  doesn't hear our excuses -- doesn't condescend to hear out songs--
  alone, alone, alone, cut off totally, indifferent to condemnation or vindication.
• 
  John Fredrickson

  I like the imagery and feel of Ritsos's poems, though these particular poems are short to the point of being fragments. He has an interesting way of bringing depth and meaning to the everyday world, often with (encyclopedic) references to Greek mythology, or to images of death and/or sex.
• 
  Cooper Renner

  Ritsos wrote way too much and many of the poems in this exemplary collection are unnecessary, but the finest are as fine as almost anyone's.
• 
  George

  Edmund Keeley's translations of Ritsos are some of the best available.
• 
  Jonathan

  Incredible work by a major modern Greek poet. Love this collection!
• 
  Shermin

  sublime,breathtaking,full of imagery.