The Pocket Sappho

Book excerpt: A vivid, contemporary translation of the greatest Greek love poet by the prize-winning poet and translator. Sappho’s lyric love poems, composed in the seventh century B.C.E., transcend time and place and continue to enchant readers today. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, the passionate elegance of her musings on life and death, loss and longing, desire, and nature speak volumes. Willis Barnstone’s vivid, contemporary translation, along with his introduction and notes, sheds new light on the spirit and mystique of this ancient Greek poet. This edition is an abridgment of The Complete Poems of Sappho.