31 (translated by Willis Barnstone, 1988) To me he seems like a god as he sits facing you and hears you near as you speak softly and laugh in a sweet echo that jolts the heart in my ribs. Authors:Sappho, Anne Carson Summary:A critically acclaimed poet and classicist presents a dramatic new translation of the poetry of Sappho, presenting all the extant fragments that exist of the ancient poets works in both English and the original Greek and furnishing an incisive introduction to Sapphos life and times.

Complete with Carson's introduction and notes, it will become the standard translation of Sappho for our time. Since Sappho's texts are fragments, it is inevitable that Carson offers some pages that are mostly brackets indicating missing material, suggestively interspersed with the words 'youth' or. Translated by Anne Carson, Vintage Books, 2002. IF NOT, WINTER gives us an extraordinary ancient poet brought alive by a brilliantly empathetic contemporary poet. Carson says of her method of translation: 'I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through.' And certainly her translation illuminates Sappho's reflections on love and desire, her companions and rivals, the goddess Aphrodite, her own daughter, Kleis.

In IF NOT, WINTER, Carson presents all the extant fragments of Sappho's verse, employing brackets and white space to denote missing text - allowing the reader to imagine the poems as they were written. During her life on the island of Lesbos, Sappho is said to have composed nine books of lyrics. From the critically acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson: a brilliant new translation of the work of Sappho, together with the original Greek.

Fragments of sappho anne carson