Yannis Ritsos, Poems Selected Books

"When Yannis Ritsos’s Moonlight Sonata was published in France in 1961 the famous surrealist poet Louis Aragon called Ritsos the best poet in the world. Having read and studied the works of innumerable poets over the years, I have concluded that Aragon was right. I would also add that not only was Ritsos the greatest poet of his own time, he truly is the greatest poet who ever wrote. Not only for his colossal volume of work but for his expressiveness, his crystal-clear images, and the unique way he sees through his personal lens. His keen eye presents the reader with anything and everything pertaining to human life in such excruciating detail, with such amazing clarity, and in such beautiful poetics as no other poet has ever accomplished. Only a poet with these gifts could capture such an image as the following: The sea, the sun, the trees. And again, the trees, the sun, the sea. Pay attention: in this reversed repetition, the sun is still the center like lust is the center of the body"--