C. P. Cavafy

The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy

A new translation of a poet widely considered one of the most important of the twentieth century.

C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) wrote some of the most powerful poems in world literature. His work uncannily translates history, the record of the many, into an individual personal document. He draws on the spectrum of Greek poetic tradition to write wickedly satirical yet internal poetry, whether his speaker is a spoiled rich boy planning to enter politics or a poor, ostracized, pure young man destroyed by poverty and priggish social mores.

“How to capture a mind that roams both the Alexandrian streets outside his door and the god-haunted alleys of the Panhellenic past? I would venture to say that only a gifted poet could accomplish that task, and in Aliki Barnstone we have found that poet.”—Sherod Santos

“Cavafy’s simplicity, learning, pleasure in sex, tranquility in exile, have healed our anguish for over a century. . . . Cavafy’s deeply cultured melancholy and praise of learning and the body flow unimpeded in Barnstone’s translations.”—Andrei Codrescu