From internationally acclaimed and Governor General’s Award-winning author Steven Heighton comes a passionate novel of buried secrets, the repercussions of war and finding love among the ruins Elias Trifannis is desperate to belong somewhere. To make his dying ex-cop father happy, he joins the military—but in Afghanistan, by the time he realizes his last-minute bid for connection was a terrible mistake, it’s too late and a tragedy has occurred. In the aftermath, exhausted by nightmares, Elias is sent to Cyprus to recover, where he attempts to find comfort in the arms of Eylül, a beautiful Turkish journalist. But the lovers’ reprieve ends in a moment of shocking brutality that drives Elias into Varosha, once a popular Greek-Cypriot resort town, abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974. Hidden in the lush, overgrown ruins is a community of exiles and refugees living resourcefully but comfortably. Thanks to the cheerfully corrupt Colonel Kaya, who turns a blind eye, they live under the radar of the Turkish authorities. As he begins to heal, Elias finds himself drawn to the enigmatic and secretive Kaiti while he learns at last to “simply belong.” But just when it seems he has found sanctuary, events he himself set in motion have already begun to endanger it.

From internationally acclaimed and Governor General’s Award-winning author Steven Heighton comes a passionate novel of buried secrets, the repercussions of war and finding love among the ruins Elias Trifannis is desperate to belong somewhere. To make his dying ex-cop father happy, he joins the military—but in Afghanistan, by the time he realizes his last-minute bid for connection was a terrible mistake, it’s too late and a tragedy has occurred. In the aftermath, exhausted by nightmares, Elias is sent to Cyprus to recover, where he attempts to find comfort in the arms of Eylül, a beautiful Turkish journalist. But the lovers’ reprieve ends in a moment of shocking brutality that drives Elias into Varosha, once a popular Greek-Cypriot resort town, abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974. Hidden in the lush, overgrown ruins is a community of exiles and refugees living resourcefully but comfortably. Thanks to the cheerfully corrupt Colonel Kaya, who turns a blind eye, they live under the radar of the Turkish authorities. As he begins to heal, Elias finds himself drawn to the enigmatic and secretive Kaiti while he learns at last to “simply belong.” But just when it seems he has found sanctuary, events he himself set in motion have already begun to endanger it.

This book adds to an international bibliography specialised on the reception of Homer, including studies on Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian and Argentinian authors (from the 19th to the 21st century) articulated by a common perspective, Homeric motifs, and differentiated by literary genre, that is, theatre, poetry, novel, and short story. Well-known and lesser-known names from the literatures being analysed also contribute to the novelty of the set. The contributors are researchers from each of the countries with a specific and well-informed vision of each context. Organising the volume according to these genres encourages historical and cultural comparisons of countries with a long tradition in common. Each analysis is always framed within its cultural context. Due to its characteristics, this volume serves an audience with different expectations, related to Classical Studies, Literary Theory and Portuguese and Spanish Language Literatures, Theatrical Studies, History of Culture, and Postcolonial Studies.

For centuries, poets have looked into the mirror of classical myth to show us the many ways our emotional lives are still reflected in the ancient stories of heroism, hubris, transformation, and loss that myths so eloquently tell. Now, in Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths, we have the first anthology to gather the great 20th century myth-inspired poems from around the world. "Perhaps it is because the myths echo the structure of our unconscious that every new generation of poets finds them a source of inspiration and self-recognition," says Nina Kossman in her introduction to this marvelous collection. Indeed, from Valery, Yeats, Lawrence, Rilke, Akhmatova, and Auden writing in the first half of the century to such contemporary poets as Lucille Clifton, Derek Walcott, Rita Dove, Wislawa Szymborska, and Mark Strand, the material of Greek myth has elicited a poetry of remarkably high achievement. And by organizing the poems first into broad categories such as "Heroes," "Lovers," "Trespassers," and secondly around particular mythological figures such as Persephone, Orpheus, or Narcissus, readers are treated to a fascinating spectrum of poems on the same subject. For example, the section on Odysseus includes poems by Cavafy, W. S. Merwin, Gregory Corso, Gabriel Zaid, Louise Gluck, Wallace Stevens, and many others. Thus we are allowed to see the familiar Greek hero refracted through the eyes, and sharply varying stylistic approaches, of a wide range of poets from around the world. Here, then, is a collection of extraordinary poems that testifies to--and amply rewards--our ongoing fascination with classical myth.

In this new edition of George Seferis's poems, the acclaimed translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard are revised and presented in a compact, English-only volume. The revision covers all the poems published in Princeton's earlier bilingual edition, George Seferis: Collected Poems (expanded edition, 1981). Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, George Seferis (1900-1971) has long been recognized as a major international figure, and Keeley and Sherrard are his ideal translators. They create, in the words of Archibald MacLeish, a "translation worthy of Seferis, which is to praise it as highly as it could be praised." Although Seferis was preoccupied with his tradition as few other poets of the same generation were with theirs, and although he was actively engaged in the immediate political aspirations of his nation, his value for readers lies in what he made of this preoccupation and this engagement in fashioning a broad poetic vision. He is also known for his stylistic purity, which allows no embellishment beyond that necessary for precise yet rich poetic statement.

{This is a} translation worthy of Seferis, which is to praise it as highly as it could be praised. -- Archibald MacLeish.

This anthology is composed of recently revised translations selected from the five volumes of work by major poets of modern Greece offered by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard during the past two decades. The poems chosen are those that translate most successfully into English and that are also representative of the best work of the original poets. C. P. Cavafy and Angelos Sikelianos are major poets of the first half of the twentieth century. George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis, who followed them, both won the Nobel Prize in literature. Nikos Gatsos was a very popular translator, lyricist, and critic.

From the award-winning, multi-genre author and musician Steven Heighton, Songbook brings together Heighton’s lyrics and music for the first time in a single volume, including his final songs, which have never been heard or seen until now. When Steven Heighton died suddenly of cancer in 2022, he was in the middle of an intensely creative period of songwriting. He released his first album of original material, The Devil’s Share, in 2021, and was preparing to record his second album. Known first as a poet, Heighton had always held that “music and poetry are two words for the same thing.” As in his songwriting, in Songbook Heighton moves fluidly between genres and subjects, from political songs like “The Butcher’s Bill,” about the carelessness of nations sending their youth to war, to reimagining the myth of Orpheus (“I'll hold my breath the whole way down / And find your soul in the undertown”), to blues tunes like “Last Living Woman Alive,” and a tribute to the late John Prine, the “Buddha of Song.” With the chords accompanying the lyrics, readers and musicians have the ability to bring the songs to life with their own interpretations. The music in Songbook was the final work of Heighton’s life, and it is not only a gift to have his lyrics and chords, but an invitation from Heighton himself, challenging his readers to answer the call and keep singing along.

An Englishman sets out for an ancient Greek palace in Crete to clear his family's name. The man's father and grandfather excavated it and they have been accused by the archeological community of fabricating artifacts. A first novel.

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Literature - Basics, grade: 90.00, , course: Poetry, language: English, abstract: A close reading of Seferis' poem Helen including elements around the Greek myth as the background of the poem. A verse by verse examination is done for crucial verses in the poem and potential meanings are discussed. Seferis’ “Helen” is written in free verse and does not feature a fixed rhyme scheme straying this way away from traditional forms of poetry. While the poem is written in a modernist form, the mythical element is overwhelming in the poem, a contradiction that connects the present with the past. The poem’s epigraph sets the mythological background which relates the poem to the Greek mythology tradition. Homer’s myth about Paris’ choice of Helen as fairer than goddesses lingers in the background as the basis of all that follows and as the initial cause of the Trojan War. In the first three verses of the epigraph, it is established that the speaker is in exile ordered by “Appolow”, a man away from his home. Finally the epigraph, informs in the words of Helen that she was never in Troy, instead there was just a phantom image of hers there. The myth sets the context of the poem while the myths are further elaborated as the memories of the speaker who reminisces in a dramatic monologue triggered by the nightingale’s song and his inability to sleep, tormented by these memories. The repetition of the phrase “The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres”, written in quotation marks as if someone else is uttering them, also points to the use of the chorus in the ancient tragedy form, in which the chorus often repeats certain words connecting the poem even more to the ancient Greek mythology tradition.