SOURCE: A review of Selected Poems, in Poetry, Vol. CXXXVII, No. 4, January, 1981, pp. 220-42.

In the following essay, Simon provides an unfavorable assessment of Sikelianos's poetry.

We come now to two modern Greek poets. First, Angelos Sikelianos (1884—1951), whose Selected Poems were translated (and, in some instances, retranslated) by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Sikelianos was a mixture of neo-romanticism and symbolism from the West (mostly French) which intense, home-grown nationalism, which in his case was more cultural and mystical than political—he and his American first wife tried, with much effort and expense, to revive the Delphic Games. A friend of the first Greek modernist, Kostis Palamas, and, off and on, of Nikos Kazantzakis, Sikelianos was also influenced by his brother-in-law, Raymond Duncan, Isadora's brother. He was active in reviving Greek tragedy both at home and abroad, and himself wrote a number of tragedies. He also fought in...