Correspondence with My Greeks

Scott Cairns

• Publisher: Slant Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781639821716
• eBook ISBN: 9781639821730
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

C iting a line from Elizabeth
Bishop—“The bight is littered with old correspondences”—Scott Cairns avers: 
“So, also, is my mind.”

            Indeed, 
it was Bishop’s “The Bight”—encountered late in his undergraduate
education—that may have first alerted Cairns to one, key, salutary fact of
literary history: virtually every work written over the centuries has been to
some degree a responsive text, something of an epistolary response to what the
writer beholds—the landscape, the heavens, or—as in most cases—another prior
text.





            In
addition to volumes by Coleridge, Keats, Bishop, Dickinson, Frost, Stevens, and
Auden, Cairns keeps collections by his beloved Greeks—Kavafy, Elytis, and
Seferis—on his writing desk. In corresponding with them, he engages some of the
profound and recurring themes of his distinguished career: the mystery of
creation (and its absent/present Creator), the sense that every word—every
term—proves to be less a terminus than a point of departure, and a vision of
inexhaustible Love transcending all apparent limits, all neat binaries, 
including that of heaven and hell. These poets have served as his mentors, his
provocateurs, and—in his mind at least—his primary audience.





            Correspondence
with My Greeks is a work at once deeply human and
hauntingly transcendent, the full flowering of the poet’s lifelong devotion to
the generative power of the word.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Still Waiting—After Κονσταντίνος Καβάφης
• The City—After Κονσταντίνος Καβάφης
• The Democratic State—After Κονσταντίνος Καβάφης
• In the Year 2023, Pascha—After Κονσταντίνος Καβάφης
• Half Past Midnight—After Κονσταντίνος Καβάφης
• An Explanation—After Άγγελος Σικελιανός
• Euripides the Athenian— After Γιώργοσ Σεφέρης
• Vision— After Γιώργος Σεφέρης
• Secret Poem— After Γιώργος Σεφέρης
• Ode: Erotic Word—After Γιώργος Σεφέρης
• Noetic Core—After Γιώργος Θέμελης
• The Eros of the Moment—After Ζωή Καρέλλη
• Matter of Translation—After Ζωή Καρέλλη
• Exhumation—After Ζωή Καρέλλη
• Had My Efforts Proved Effectual—After Ρίτα Μπούμη-Παπά
• Our Habitual “Lord Have Mercy”—After Δημήτριος Αντωνίου
• They Open Us—After Νίκος Παππάς
• As Such—After Νικόλαος Κάλας
• Disinterest—After Μελισσάνθη
• Messenger—After Γιάννης Ρίτσος
• Capacity—After Οδυσσέας Ελύτης
• Autopsy—After Οδυσσέας Ελύτης
• To Shape as I Am Shaped—After Νικηφόρος Βρεττάκος
• No Saint—After Μίλτος Σαχτούρης
• For My Father—After Αντώνης Δεκαβάλλες
• A Late Lament—After Ελένη Βακαλό
• Another Creed —After Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης
• A Late Prayer—After Τάσος Λειβαδίτης
• Distillate—After Γιώργης Παυλόπουλος
• My Question—After Μανόλης Αναγνωστάκης
• Orthodoxy—After Νίκος Καρούζος
• Cedar—After Βικτωρία Θεοδώρου
• The Origin and the Wandering—After Λύντια Στεφάνου
• Soul Saturday—After Νίκος Φοκάς
• My Language—After Τίτος Πατρίκιος
• Waiting Room—After Ντίνος Χριστιανόπουλος
• Photograph, 1960—After Κική Δημουλά
• Absences—After Χρίστος Λάσκαρης
• Litany For Those Omitted— After Στυλιανός Σ. Χαρκιανάκης
• Violences—After Μάρκος Μέσκος
• Due Attention—After Κατερίνα Αγγελάκη-Ρουκ
• The Blood that Dizzied Me—After Ζέφη Δαράκη
• From My Cold Stasídi—After Κυριάκος Χαραλαμπίδης
• Skin—After Σάκης Παπαδημητρίου
• Measures—After Αργύρης Χιόνης
• There, Beneath Your Feet—After Γιάννης Κοντός
• Love’s Fool—After Μανόλης Πρατικάκης
• At the Chapel on the Mount—After Μιχάλης Γκανάς
• Vantage—After Λευτέρης Πούλιος
• Performance—After Ντίνος Σιώτης
• Covert Moment, You—After Άντεια Φραντζή
• Dwelling in the Kástro—After Χριστόφορος Λιοντάκης
• Praise—After Αθηνά Παπαδάκη
• No Apologia —After Νάσος Βαγενάς
• Fine Point—After Βασίλης Στεριάδης
• Prospect—After Γιάννης Πατίλης
• Late Prayer—After Δημήτρης Καλοκύρης
• Catalog—After Κώστας Μαυρουδής
• Late Apprehension—After Παυλίνα Παμπούδη
• Continuing Descent—After Τζένη Μαστοράκη
• From Whence the Road?—After Χρήστος Τσιάμης
• Undesired Kiss—After Γιώργος Μαρκόπουλος
• One Consolation—After Αλεξάνδρα Πλαστήρα
• Mists—After Λιάνα Σακελλίου-Σουλτς
• Cemetery Chapel—After Δημήτρης Χουλιαράκης
• Words for Irini, My Mother —After Χάρης Βλαβιανός
• A Glimpse—After Στάθης Γουργουρής
• Considering the Martyrs—After Τάσος Καπερνάρος
• The Desolate—After Σπύρος Λαζαρίδης
• Changes—After Στράτης Πασχάλης
• Where Now?—After Γιώργος Μπλάνας
• The Heresies—After Νίκος Δαββέτας
• Inclination—After Κωστής Γκιμοσούλης
• This House, Et Cetera—After Σωτήρης Τριβιζάς
• No Oracle—After Σπύρος Βρεττός
• Apace—After Θανάσης Χατζόπουλος
• Apiary—After Ιουλίτα Ηλιοπούλου
• Uneasy Equations—After Ανδριάνα Καλφοπούλου
• Acknowledgments