SOURCE: A review of What I Love: Selected Poems, in Booklist, Vol. 83, No. 1, September 1, 1986, p. 22.

In the following review, the critic complains that much has been lost in Olga Broumas's translation of Elytis's What I Love.

Eternal freshness, clarity, the ability to convey the abstract through the concrete, even the mundane, a sheer musicality—these are among the gifts the Greeks have given to poetry, from earliest times. One of the most famous of post-World War II Greek poets, Elytis maintains this great tradition, but he does so with a personal voice, especially in his love lyrics. In this selection of about two dozen poems, translator Broumas presents a range of the poet's interests and styles, some of which borrow heavily (perhaps too much so) from French surrealism of the early part of the century. The result is a curious amalgam of sensual particulars set amid almost mythic...