Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Tasos Livaditis: Selected Poems
    Tasos Livaditis: Selected Poems
    Tasos Livaditis: Selected Poems
    Ebook103 pages53 minutes

    Tasos Livaditis: Selected Poems

    By Manolis Aligizakis

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    For years I’ve prepared myself for that big moment
    the miracle of the century, on the other hand
    you have to admit I’m one of a kind in my field —
    but, God, what happened, who betrayed me, where
    they found all the proof? The procedure was quick
    the district attorney to the point, “are you him?”
    he asked me, “him” I answered
    is there any worst charge?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibros Libertad Publishing
    Release dateNov 13, 2014
    ISBN9781311457639
    Tasos Livaditis: Selected Poems

    Read more from Manolis Aligizakis

    Related to Tasos Livaditis

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Two Poems by Kaveh Akbar

      Jun 8, 2021

      I murdered my least defensible vices,stacking them like bodiesin the surf. An armada of nurses rode into cherish the dead: Try harder, littlemoons, they said to the corpses, spooningeggplant into each mouth. Winterfollowed winter. Horses coughedblood

      1 min read

    • Article

      How to Stop Crying

      Nov 7, 2019

      How to Stop Crying
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Hisham Matar

      Dec 18, 2018

      The fact that this isn’t recognized for what it is, a magisterial work and a 20th-century masterpiece, makes me even more anxious about our times. The post A Year in Reading: Hisham Matar appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: McKenzie Wark

      Dec 13, 2023

      In 2023, it was a lot of books connected one way or another to raving, transsexuality, and autofiction. The post A Year in Reading: McKenzie Wark appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Revolutions In The Margins

      May 1, 2020

      Revolutions In The Margins
      5 min read

    • Article

      An Appreciation Of Muriel Rukeyser, “St. Roach”

      Sep 1, 2021

      For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you,for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth,they showed me by every action to despise your kind;for that I saw my people making war on you,I could not tell you apart, one from anothe

      15 min read

    • Article

      A Question of Belonging

      Nov 16, 2021

      A Question of Belonging
      20 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Oct 11, 2023

      “I wish you were here,” says the speaker of Tomasz Różycki’s poetry collection To the Letter (Archipelago Books, November 2023), translated from the Polish by poet Mira Rosenthal. This phrase recurs throughout the book, addressing many figures—a love

      3 min read

    • Article

      I, Me, My

      Aug 28, 2022

      I, Me, My
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Writing Wisdom of Derek Walcott

      Mar 20, 2017

      “The future happens,” says the philosopher in Derek Walcott’s stage retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, “No matter how much we scream.” Walcott died on Friday at the age of 87—and instead of screaming, I’m feeling grateful towards this great poet, playwrig

      7 min read

    • Article

      On Punks

      Mar 1, 2022

      Until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting by a single person in US history occurred in the middle of the night of June 12, 2016 in an Orlando nightclub, Pulse. 49 lives were lost and countless affected, including those of us read

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 249

      Jun 8, 2021

      The Art of Fiction No. 249
      30 min read

    • Article

      Come Angels! Come Beasts!

      Jan 1, 2019

      Revelations by Ruben QuesadaSibling Rivalry PressPaperback, 38 pages, 2018 “Come angels! Come beasts!” Ruben Quesada beckons on the opening page of his dazzling wild chapbook. Have the four horsemen from the Apocalypse come to break seals? Quesada’s

      12 min read

    • Article

      László Krasznahorkai

      Jun 15, 2018

      László Krasznahorkai
      27 min read

    • Article

      Dissident Lit

      Sep 1, 2022

      My sophomore year in college, I took a class on the Russian novel. I remember our goodlooking young professor striding across campus in a long black coat, heads turning in his wake. It was said he looked like Lenin. His eyes burned like coals, his ch

      9 min read

    • Article

      Does Poetry Have Street Cred?

      Sep 6, 2019

      Does Poetry Have Street Cred?
      10 min read

    • Article

      One April Day

      Jun 4, 2018

      One April Day
      3 min read

    • Article

      An Apprenticeship

      Dec 1, 2021

      An Apprenticeship
      39 min read

    • Article

      Palestinian Poet Mourid Barghouthi's Death Mourned By Many

      Feb 15, 2021

      Mourid wrote: "It’s fine to die, once, our hands crossed on our chests, empty and pale, with no scratches, no chains, no banners, and no petitions."

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Tasos Livaditis

    4.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      perfect

    Book preview

    Tasos Livaditis - Manolis Aligizakis

    COPYRIGHT

    Translation copyright © Manolis Aligizakis 2020

    Published in 2020 by:

    Libros Libertad Publishing Ltd.

    2244 154A Street

    Surrey, B.C. V4A 5S9

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages in reviews. Any request for photocopying or other reproduction of any part of this book should be directed in writing to the publisher or to ACCESS: The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

    ISBN 9798636708858

    Cover design by Iryna Spica

    Ebook by www.ebookconversion.ca

    FOREWORD

    The people’s poet in more than one way, Tasos Livaditis stands apart from other poets of his era because of his deep understanding, his heart rendering existential agony, initially expressed as a tender cry filled with compassion within the boundaries of his optimistic realism and on the second phase of his creative career as an introverted search for the meaning of life after the dissolution of his expectations as an artist-fighter for a better future.

    The calendar will show October

    with the wilted leaves and revolutions

    It was October when he said his farewell to us.

    Here I‘ve come to the end. Time to go. As you will also go.

    and the ghosts of my life will search for me

    running in the night and leaves will shiver and fall.

    Autumn comes this way. For this, I say to you,

    let us look at life with more compassion, since it was never real.

    He never imagined that the ghosts of his life would multiply in such a fast pace soon after his death. The adventure of his vision turned out to become a hardship, the rapid fashion of change in social behaviour by the most suspicious of men truly shifted dramatically in the short nineteen years after his death. Within one or two years after his death his so called socialistic dream collapsed in an irreversible way that turned his dream for a just world into a fable.

    However Livaditis knew deep inside that only the Time of Justice eventually justifies one. Today Livaditis is considered a very important poet of his era. He was not at all insignificant although not recognized enough. Because as times passes and values change or shift position Time of Justice shifts as well and sets laws and flawless details in the Stock Market of Values.

    Tasos Livaditis is one of the last poets who dreamed of a different Greece and gave all he had to turn that dream into reality. He was one of the last who believed in the collective versus the personal even if that collective meant dramatic adventures: surely his exile and persecution but also the adventure of his internal revolution. The person who dreamed of a better world was embittered when he realized the utopia of his vision. Yet he never lost faith and he always stood gracefully opposite the descending sun and in that glamour of the red dusk he wept alone but with optimism for the future. Unfortunately his life was cut short and at the age of 66 he departed leaving a nation to mourn the people’s poet and to reflect on his teachings; a nation that shifted its focus toward his vision because the world of the poet is the world of humiliation and exhaustion. It’s the world of bitterness and futility and Tasos Livaditis suffered a lot, was persecuted a lot and pendulated a lot in his life. How else could he write such great poems?

    There is a similarity in the life of this man and the life of Yannis Ristsos whom Tasos Livaditis refer to as the teacher. Both men were leftists along with Avgeris, Varnalis, Anagnostakis and others, they were both exiled for their political views, they both left behind a vast bibliography, they both had one daughter and they both went through a poetic shift, a change of focus from writing poetry to serve the cause of the left to writing poetry having in its center the progress, improvement and refinement of the external and internal facets of man.

    In the Introduction of this edition I have added one poem written by Yannis Ritsos and excerpts from reviews written in Greek on the twentieth of his death by friends and close associates of this great poet. I have translated these excerpts and placed them in the order I thought most appropriate. I chose to introduce this great poet to the English speaking world not only with the regular introduction format but also with these comments published by Kedros in 2008, this poet’s exclusive publisher.

    The sources of these reviews are referred to in the bibliography of this book.

    My heartfelt thank you is extended to Mr. Stelios Petros Halas for granting me his permission to do this translation.

    ~ Manolis Aligizakis,

    Cretan, writer, poet, translator

    INTRODUCTION

    Tasos Livaditis belongs to a group of twentieth century Greek poets who devoted a long period of their lives fighting for the cause of the left. This man much like Yannis Ritsos and others was exiled for his political views, he was persecuted and found himself at the jaws of circumstances that defined a major part of his life with a struggle and a collapse and a disappointment and a turn toward a hazy horizon with hopes of finding their way in this world but who doubtlessly found his footing by looking inward and by focusing his attention to the everyday men their aspirations and dreams.

    He was a poet who every day in his life lived poetry in every possible form discovering it in the most common and in the timeworn aspects of daily routine. His life was turned into poetry. Nothing else speaks more

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1