Petrified Time ― Poems from Makronisos

Poetry. Translated from the Greek by Martin McKinsey and Scott King. Bilingual Edition. Written in 1949 while Ritsos was detained on the Greek prison isle of Makronisos, the poems in PETRIFIED TIME (translated in its entirety and printed with the Greek en face) document this harrowing time in the poet's life. As Martin McKinsey states in his introduction to this collection, "Aside from their documentary interest, what makes them worth reading is their luminous imagery, drawing on the Greek oral tradition of fairytales and folksongs (especially Klephtic ballads), and the controlled power of their free-verse idiom. Their purposefulness should also serve as a reminder of what it means for an artist to step out of him or herself, and conceive of an art that is not simply a record or critique of what is, but a shaper of what will be."