April is Poetry Moth

Kimon Friar edited and translated the "Greek" chapter in Bantam's useful Modern European Poetry (1966). Of particular note are his introductions to individual poets like Eléni Vakaló (1921-2001).

Friar has Vakaló in agreement with Archibald MacLeish (see the last two lines of his "Ars Poetica") and, in Friar's words, "the thing seen [after Marianne Moore], for she feels that the rhythms of life resides within objects, as in herself, until her rhythms become refined beyond harmony and become the tendons of the thing described, lean and muscular." (258)

Here are the last two lines of Vakaló's "Age of the Polyp":

The appropriation of spaces between joints

Is heard in poems quietly like a creaking

For those interested in reading more of Vakaló's poetry, I recommend the translations of Karen Emmerich.