Willis Barnstone

Sappho

A prize-winning poet offers a contemporary translation of poems written by the greatest Greek love poet, whose thrilling lyric verse and mystique endures to be rediscovered by each generation. Original.

The Complete Poems of Sappho

kait

women. are everything. to me. i liked this so much and it was cool to see the poems about women loving women and what they meant to sappho and how important they are in the current world.

azliana aziz

Kimberly

The illustrations in this book are simple, elegant, and beautiful. I would love to read Sappho in ancient Greek, but I thought the translation was well done. I enjoyed some of her pieces more than others. I was drawn to the ones that told a story or and loved the ones that spoke deeply of emotion. I am interested to see other translations and how they compare.

Erin 

What better book to finish off Pride month than the Complete Poems of Sappho, the World's Favourite Greek Lesbian? We should all be reading more Greek literature and poetry, and if we did, the world would be a much more desirable place. Passionate and full of deep love, Sappho's poetry makes you wonder how we ever shifted to a world where gay love was described as unnatural (organised religion, that's how). There is nothing more human than love for another. Probably not For Everyone, but for everyone anyway.

Organisational wise, I would probably have preferred the sections of this book to be rearranged. Having the Greek people and places glossary at the beginning rather at the end would be so much more useful. By reading it before reading any of the poetry, you might actually be able to identify some of the people that Sappho writes about. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from reading it first anyway, but no one jumps to the end of the book and reads that part first. I appreciated the sources, notes, and commentary section a lot, because I am a person that struggles to read older styles of writing, and having little explanations as to who and what is being referenced is immensely helpful in appreciating anything in general. However, I wish that it was intermingled with the poetry itself - having a poem immediately followed by notes and commentary is much easier than flipping back and forth between the beginning and end of the book - especially if you are reading an ebook. As it was, I skipped a lot of the commentary because of this, largely because it felt like I would have to go back and reread the entire poetry section again from start to finish.

Anyway, I'm glad I read this. Ancient Greece and Greek mythology in general is just impossibly cool and relatable, and the world needs it. I could go into so much more detail about how it affects our lives and language and knowledge about pretty much everything. But another time - for now, enjoy the lesbian love poetry.

Anna Yada

Sappho’s thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2,600 years—certainly a record for poetry of any kind—and love for her art only increases as time goes on. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, her mystique endures to be discovered anew by each generation, and to inspire new efforts at bringing the spirit of her Greek words faithfully into English. In the past, translators have taken two basic approaches to Sappho: either very literally translating only the words in the fragments, or taking the liberty of reconstructing the missing parts. Willis Barnstone has taken a middle course, in which he remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious. This edition includes extensive notes and a special section of "Testimonia": appreciations of Sappho in the words of ancient writers from Plato to Plutarch. Also included are a glossary of all the figures mentioned in the poems, and suggestions for further reading.

The Complete Poems of Sappho

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