George Seferis s Complete Poems reissued as a Carcanet Classic. George Seferis is the great Greek poet of the twentieth century, a classic among classics. The formal and thematic versatility of his work, its decisively modern inflections, call Eliot s poems to mind: fastidious and expansive in equal measure. Like Eliot s deep-rooted Modernism, Seferis s never loses touch with the stones and inscriptions of the past. He writes for his and our time, poetically and politically alert: culture can free us or, misapplied, can trammel us. Aptly described as the unlocker of ancient stones and sea voyages , Seferis was for Peter Levi `one of the greatest writers in this century in any language. . . From Seferis it was possible to learn. . . what seriousness about poetry is. And Archibald MacLeish wrote, if any contemporary poet can be said to be essential, Seferis is that poet, and this - referring to an earlier edition of this book - is the true body of his work .
