"The Fourth Dimension" offers a representative cross section of [Ritsos's] work from 1938 to 1974, and contains a liberal selection of short poems, a few long poems … and the superb sequence "Twelve Poems for Cavafy."

In the short poems, most of which are not overtly political, Ritsos is full of surprises. He records, at times celebrates, the enigmatic, the irrational, the mysterious and invisible qualities of experience: Our senses are impressed as much, if not more, by the random and accidental as they are by the deliberate and institutional. If his perceptions, which stress paradox rather than irony, can be disturbing, they also define a major source of his inspiration, for it is the inexplicable and uncertain that Ritsos finds worthy of poetry…. (p. 14)

The first long poem in the book, "The Blackened Pot," written in a concentration camp in 1948–49, represents the period of Ritsos's career that produced his most...