Conversations in poetry

Greece looms large for the poet and Orthodox convert Scott Cairns. Shortly after he moved from Protestantism to Orthodoxy in 1998, Cairns began visiting Greece regularly, sometimes staying for extended periods. In 2007, he published the memoir Short Trip to the Edge about a life-changing visit to Mount Athos during a time of spiritual crisis. He later founded a summer writing program in Greece. Much of his work since his conversion is sprinkled with Greek phrases and references to Greek places.

In his latest collection of poetry, Correspondence With My Greeks (Slant Books, 104 pp.), Cairns turns to the Greek poets themselves. Some of these poems are loose translations of Greek originals, but most are “appreciations” or “responses” to modern and contemporary poets. Most of the poems were also written after Cairns was diagnosed in 2022 with a rare and incurable blood cancer.

It is unsurprising, then, that several of them deal with the past and the transitory nature of life. In “Had My Efforts Proved Effectual,” Cairns writes that if he were able to stop time, “I would kiss / my father’s brow, I would yet kiss / my mother’s cheek. I would yet hear / her song trilling from the kitchen.” Time, of course, can’t be stopped, and life is largely a lesson in losing. “The lost hours will not return,” Cairns continues, “nor / will the glacier, nor will the path, / and very little … will survive for long.”

In another poem, which takes its starting point from a Yorgos Markopoulos poem about the death of a child at the beach, Cairns writes about the sudden death of a sibling: “To this day, I recall the forest quiet being torn with keening. / To this day, I see my father’s futile efforts—pouring, / even as he wept, his own breath into the infant’s mouth.”

Yet, there is hope in these poems, too, however tentative. In a poem about martyrs, Cairns imagines that whatever memories came to them in their final moments were “preparatory” for “their now unceasing journey” with—or as Cairns puts it, “within”—God Himself. The hope is that our memories will prove similarly preparatory.

A Cairns poem usually progresses by qualification or negation. A statement is made, which is amended by a more specific statement or a contrary observation. In “No Oracle,” for example, Cairns writes, “At this late date, I entertain no / prophetic expectation.” “Better,” he continues, “to bide one’s time, to see what / manner of beast happens along.” The speaker is circumspect and wise. Only occasionally does he seem otherwise, such as when he rails against the “dim electorate” and “Nazis.”

Cairns writes about his beloved Greece and his verdant Pacific Northwest. He asks God for a miracle and to help his unbelief. He hopes his poems “have improved somewhat / over the slow decades of my labor” but supposes they have not improved “so much as to be noticed.” About this, of course, he is wrong. Cairns is one of the elder statesmen of contemporary Christian poetry, alongside poets such as Paul Mariani and Dana Gioia.

It was the elegance of Constantine Cavafy’s poetry, Cairns writes in his introduction, that showed him the way “out of the cramped spaces of my own mind and my own experience,” and so it is fitting that Cairns begins with responses to some of Cavafy’s most loved poems.

Most of the other poets will be unknown to English-speaking readers. Cairns provides their names in Greek only. Perhaps this is his way of honoring them. Yet, few readers will go to the trouble of translating these names into English and tracking down their work, and so they will remain unknown. This is unfortunate, since one of the pleasures of reading these poems is also reading the Greek originals that inspired them.

Still, there is artistry and wisdom enough in Correspondence With My Greeks to fill more than a few happy hours.