Complete Poems of Sappho

<b>A vivid contemporary translation of the greatest Greek love poet</b>--<b>with a wealth of materials for understanding her work</b>--<b>by a prize-winning poet and translator</b> <p/> Sappho's thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2600 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. <p/> 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.