With Face to the Wall by Miltos Sachtouris

Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2005), well known in Greece but shamefully neglected elsewhere, was one of the great poets of the twentieth century. His poems are nightmarish, sometimes horrifying, deeply frightening, and often poised between an underlying desperate need for hope and and equally desperate conviction that there is no hope -- in other words, they are very much like life itself in our times. Depending as they do on striking, surrealistic, un-ornamented imagery, they tend to translate well. I would recommend them most highly to everyone: poets can learn much from his spare, surrealistic but nail-on-the-head technique, and readers in general should appreciate finally finding a poet who expresses what they themselves feel about life in their most private and most desperate moments. If many of his poems don't make sense, they don't make sense in exactly the same way that modern life doesn't make sense.

Of the two books of his poetry generally available in English, I prefer this 1980 collection With Face to the Wall by well known Greek poetry translator Kimon Friar, which offers a small selection of extremely high quality pieces, translated in a very dead-pan, pointed style which well reflects the Greek original; it's out of print but still available from some vendors new or used. Also good is the 2006 Poems by Karen Emmerich, whose translations to mind aren't quite as taut but which has the advantages of offering a wider selection and being still in print. Both books include brief but useful essays on the poet.