The Poetry of Sappho: An Expanded Edition, Featuring Newly Discovered Poems

by Jim Powell

Overview

"The Sapphic impression of emotion poured out in unpremeditated speech is the product of sophisticated art. Such poetry confronts the translator with a formidable challenge.... Jim Powell is fully aware of the dangers, and speaks of the 'fluidity, ease, grace, and melodic variety' of Sappho's measures. Powell has tried to reproduce the effect. The resulting book is a brilliant success. Powell has shored her fragments against [Sappho's] ruins to give us a garland in which the flowers, though tattered, have not faded."—Bernard Knox, The New Republic

"Graceful, fluent, lucid while respectful of mystery: Jim Powell's unsurpassed embodiment of Sappho in English has all the conviction of art."—Robert Pinsky

This new edition of The Poetry of Sappho translates all the surviving texts of Sappho that make consecutive poetic sense, including the newly discovered "Brothers Ode," "Cypris fragment," and other papyrus texts published in 2014. The translation is particularly intent on bringing over into English Sappho's formal mastery along with her sense. It includes summary discussions of Sappho's biography and the history of her texts, an essay on the formal character of her work and its tradition, and notes on the poems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190296162
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	740 KB

About the Author

A MacArthur Fellow who has taught at Reed College, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley, Jim Powell is the author of two poetry collections, It Was Fever that Made the World and Substrate.

Table of Contents

Translator's Note     vii
The Poetry of Sappho     1
Sappho of Lesbos     43
The Text of Sappho's Poems     45
Abbreviations and Bibliography     49
Textual Notes     51

Editorial Reviews

"The Sapphic impression of emotion poured out in unpremeditated speech is the product of sophisticated art. Such poetry confronts the translator with a formidable challenge.... Jim Powell is fully aware of the dangers, and speaks of the 'fluidity, ease, grace, and melodic variety' of Sappho's measures. Powell has tried to reproduce the effect. The resulting book is a brilliant success. Powell has shored her fragments against [Sappho's] ruins to give us a garland in which the flowers, though tattered, have not faded."—Bernard Knox, The New Republic

"Graceful, fluent, lucid while respectful of mystery: Jim Powell's unsurpassed embodiment of Sappho in English has all the conviction of art."—Robert Pinsky

From the Publisher