Books about Sappho from Amazon.com

These hundred poems and fragments constitute virtually all of Sappho that survives and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Mary Barnard's translations are lean, incisive, direct--the best ever published. She has rendered the beloved poet's verses, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English..
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Of the nine books of lyrics the ancient Greek poet Sappho is said to have composed, only one poem has survived complete. The rest are fragments In this miraculous new translation, acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson presents all of Sappho’s fragments, in Greek and in English, as if on the ragged scraps of papyrus that preserve them, inviting a thrill of discovery and conjecture that can be described only as electric—or, to use Sappho’s words, as “thin fire . . . racing under skin.” By combining the ancient mysteries of Sappho with the contemporary wizardry of one of our most fearless and original poets, If Not, Winter provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia..
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A remarkable new addition to the fields of gender studies, classical studies, and modern poetics, Yopie Prins's Victorian Sappho sends off many casually brilliant sparks, with a broad appeal that easily transcends disciplines. "Invoked as a lyric muse in antiquity and mythologized for posterity by Ovid," Sappho has always been "a figment of the literary imagination." Prins traces the 19th-century recovery of new fragments of Sappho's poems and the allure they held for classical philologists, who attempted to piece together not only her lyrics but her absent, impossible self--the feminine voice and the female body. In scholarly writing, as well as the work of Swinburne and countless popular poets like Felicia Hemans, Sappho eventually came to embody the Victorian definition of the lyric. The era's fascination with the "incomplete" Sappho carried over to this century in the modernist idealization of the fragment. The book features engaging scholarship--the introduction alone establishes Prins as a strong and subtle thinker--and is gorgeously written. --Regina Marler.
Price: $28.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This volume contains the poetic fragments of the two illustrious singers of early sixth-century Lesbos: Sappho, the most famous woman poet of antiquity, whose main theme was love; and Alcaeus, poet of wine, war, and politics, and composer of short hymns to the gods. Also included are the principal testimonia, the ancients' reports on the lives and work of the two poets.

The five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Greek Lyric contain the surviving fragments of solo and choral song. This poetry was not preserved in medieval manuscripts, and few complete poems remain. Later writers quoted from the poets, but only so much as suited their needs; these quotations are supplemented by papyrus texts found in Egypt, most of them badly damaged. The high quality of what remains makes us realise the enormity of our loss.

Volume I presents Sappho and Alcaeus. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). Volume V contains the new school of poets active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century and also collects folk songs, drinking songs, hymns, and other anonymous pieces.

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Price: $22.87 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sappho sang her poetry to the accompaniment of the lyre on the Greek island of Lesbos over 2500 years ago. Throughout the Greek world, her contemporaries composed lyric poetry full of passion, and in the centuries that followed the golden age of archaic lyric, new forms of poetry emerged. In this unique anthology, today's reader can enjoy the works of seventeen poets, including a selection of archaic lyric and the complete surviving works of the ancient Greek women poets--the latter appearing together in one volume for the first time.
Sappho's Lyre is a combination of diligent research and poetic artistry. The translations are based on the most recent discoveries of papyri (including "new" Archilochos and Stesichoros) and the latest editions and scholarship. The introduction and notes provide historical and literary contexts that make this ancient poetry more accessible to modern readers.
Although this book is primarily aimed at the reader who does not know Greek, it would be a splendid supplement to a Greek language course. It will also have wide appeal for readers of' ancient literature, women's studies, mythology, and lovers of poetry..
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Little remains today of the writings of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (fl. late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse.

Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice, whose telltale charm, authority, immediacy, directness, intensity, and sudden changes of tone are among the hallmarks of his masterly translation.

Pamela Gordon introduces us to the world of Sappho, discusses questions surrounding the transmission of her manuscripts, offers advice on reading these texts, and concludes with an enlightening discussion of same-sex desire in Sappho..
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Games of Venus, the first comprehensive anthology of ancient Greek and Roman erotic verse, revives the tradition of eroticism in the arts for the modern reader. Unblushingly rendered with robust translations, Games of Venus presents the whole spectrum of erotic poetry from Sappho to Ovid. Recreating in English the full range of styles and tones present in the original Greek and Latin, the translators capture the gamut of amorous situations portrayed in these poems.

The volume contains a useful introduction acquainting the reader with ancient sexual mores in their social setting, and offers a helpful guide to reading ancient erotic verse. The poems are prefaced by brief sketches of each poet's life and times, poetic output and style, and are accompanied by informative notes elucidating references to myth, geography, historical events and personages, as well as unfamiliar sexual and social customs..
Price: $32.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Sappho's Leap delights "—USA Today

Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit the mind of the greatest love poet the world has ever known. At the age of fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women, taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the shadowy realm of Hades.

Erica Jong—always our keenest-eyed chronicler of the wonders and vagaries of sex and love—has found the perfect subject for a witty and sensuous tale of a passionate woman ahead of her time. A generation of readers who have been moved to laughter and recognition by Jong's heroines will be enchanted anew by her re-creation of the immortal poet..
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