Exercises 1950-1960

Author: Yannis Ritsos

Translator: Spring Ulmer

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (2025)

Yannis Ritsos wrote Exercises after being tortured and detained during the Greek Civil War. Incredibly, the poems are filled not with bitterness but with amazement—at a solitary leaf, a rope ladder, rose and grey light. Alongside such tenderness, of course, the nation state stretches out in the sun, teeth bared. What to say about the human condition? Not long after completing these poems, Ritsos was again imprisoned.