Complete Poems
“Extraordinary.” —Dan Chiasson,The New Yorker “Cavafy’s distinctive tone—wistfully elegiac but resolutely dry-eyed—has captivated English-language poets from W. H. Auden to James Merrill to Louise Glück. . . . Mendelsohn’s new translations not only bring us closer to one of the great poets of the twentieth century; [they] also reinvigorate our relationship to the English language . . . Like Richard Howard’s Baudelaire or Robert Pinsky’s Dante, Mendelsohn’s Cavafy is itself a work of art.” —The New York Times Book Review “Brilliant . . . With his passionate reading of this poet-historian . . . Mendelsohn has created not only an essential guide to Cavafy for English-speaking readers, but has likely shaped our understanding of the greatest writer of modern Greek for generations to come.” —Boston Review “Eloquent . . . [This is] the Cavafy of a brilliant critic who has a true and deep affinity for the poet—and who has succeeded in giving him to us whole for the first time.” —The Nation “Thrilling . . . Mendelsohn is such a felicitous interpreter of Cavafy . . . The explanatory essays he has attached to almost every poem can contain every bit as much passion and humanity as the poet’s own work.” —Harper’s Magazine “Superb . . . Mendelsohn’s translations are not only skillful, but elegant; best of all, they catch the music of the originals.” —The New Criterion “A vigorous labor of literary love . . . The poems fully embody Cavafy the sensualist and the antiquarian and his distinctive lyric shuttling between the ancient and the modern worlds.” —Billy Collins “With deep feeling, exacting care, and extraordinary intelligence, Mendelsohn has given us a stunning new Cavafy . . . All of us who care about literature are indebted to Mendelsohn for bringing forward a splendid addition to our understanding of a poet whose work is lit by bright starry sparks of the eternal.” —Edward Hirsch